Can A Weed Eater Replace A Lawn Mower For A Small Yard?

Keeping your yard in top condition requires the right tools, but many of those tools don't come cheap. Even many cheaper top-rated lawn mowers can cost hundreds of dollars, and if you're not going to use them all that often, it might seem like they're not worth the investment. After all, a weed eater is far cheaper, and it can also be used to cut grass, so why not skip a mower altogether and rely on a weed eater instead?

Although it might seem like a financially shrewd decision at first glance, replacing a mower with a weed eater probably isn't a great idea. Keeping a lawn in good condition using only a weed eater is going to be significantly harder, and it'll likely take longer too. Primarily, this is because a weed eater is a lot less precise than a good mower, and that significantly increases the chance that you'll damage your lawn while you're trimming it.

If you're looking to keep grass as healthy as possible, it's a good idea to follow the ⅓ rule. That rule dictates that you should never remove more than ⅓ of the height of the grass per mow. Less drastic, more frequent cuts can help grass develop deeper roots and can prevent it being damaged if there's a period of higher heat after you mow.

Although the ⅓ rule is helpful, it isn't without its drawbacks. The first is that you'll have to be more flexible with your mowing schedule — grass can grow at different speeds in different weather conditions, and growing speed can also vary between different types of grass. If you're looking to keep a fast-growing grass short, you'll need to mow it especially frequently.

The easiest way to keep it at that ideal length is with a mower, regardless of the size of your yard. In order to rely on a weed eater alone, you'd need to be able to precisely hold the weed eater at the same height across the entirety of your lawn, all while accounting for any minor bumps or inconsistencies in the height of the terrain. In peak mowing season, you might have to do this once a week, or more. Make a single mistake and you can easily cut down into the root of the grass, which might leave patches of visible damage in the lawn.

As well as requiring impractical levels of precision to achieve a consistently clean mow, using a weed eater instead of a mower can also be much more time consuming. If you're cutting longer grass, it's advisable to complete several passes of the area you're trimming, starting with a higher cut and then cutting lower each time until you reach the height you're aiming for. If you try to cut it exactly to height on the first pass, it's much more likely that you'll end up cutting part of the grass too short. In contrast, a mower can precisely trim grass in only one pass.

Although it's not able to replace a mower entirely, a weed eater is still a very useful tool to use alongside a mower if you have a small yard. It can be used to trim near obstacles like plants, trees, furniture, or anywhere else that would be difficult to reach with a mower. If your yard has multiple trees, outdoor power tool maker Stihl recommends using a weed eater to trim a border around them before using the mower.

Weed eaters are also useful for tackling larger areas of overgrown grass that a mower might struggle to cut through. To achieve a more even cut across those overgrown areas, Stihl says that it's worth using the quadrant method of partitioning the area into several smaller sections. Once you've mentally mapped out the area into those sections, start from the outside and complete each section one at a time until you reach the middle of the area.

Even with your weed eater technique mastered, a lawn mower will still form an essential part of your lawn care tool kit. If you're on a tighter budget, it's worth checking user ratings on the website of your home improvement retailer of choice to find a cost-effective mower that will still get the job done. If you're shopping at Walmart, Greenworks' lawn mower gets impressively high ratings, and it's available for around $150.