5 String Trimmer Skills to Learn including Lawn Edging, Tree Ring Edging, and Cutting Tall Grass

hey guys jason creel and this is the lawn care life today i'm going to talk to you about something that i feel pretty strongly about and that's the ability to use a string trimmer weed eater weed whacker or like they call it in australia i think they call it a whipper snipper or something and i think in the uk they call it a strimmer anyway whatever you call it uh we we call it weed eater in the south anyway uh whatever you call it i when i was mowing a lot of grass you know i it seemed like people had this disease and it was a disease of being addicted to the lawnmower but they were almost allergic to these things and i said well anybody can get on the lawn mower and go back and forth but i want to see your skills on this so um if you don't know how to use one of these i'm gonna show you some of the five must-have skills in my mind for you to be a professional with the string trimmer and that was you know i could work with somebody for for literally 10 minutes and i could tell okay this guy is what i you know he knows how to handle his string trimmer so what we're going to do today is i'm going to show you the skills and i'm going to demonstrate and i'll be honest i'm a weed control fertilization guy now i'm a little bit rusty but it's like riding a bicycle i think i can uh remember how to use it so and i still have a lot of practice on my own yard so let's get started five must have skills to be a professional with a weed eater i would call it what we call it in the south let's get started [Music] if you notice my shirt i've got the the shirt we got last year is the because we missed the gie expo from last year if you're going this year i'll put a code in the description that you can use to get a half off your ticket so hopefully we'll see you guys at the gie expo this year in october 2021. okay you see this is a call it what you want i mean if you could basically a flower bed with no flowers but i've got this area with pine straw maybe whether you've got pine straw mulch and this was cut yesterday with a lawnmower but guess what happens look what happens sometimes when you mow the grass you see how that's sticking up significantly higher right here than over here and that's what happens you end up with a little bit of a lip um because if you get your your mower hanging all the way over here maybe it falls off the edge and scalps it maybe you get into the pine straw and mulch and start mulching that up you know no pun intended there but so it's not good so anyway what we need to do here to clean this up is we need to define this edge and then i'm going to show you what else i'm going to come back and i'm going to level this part out to make it a nice even transition just in case you're curious what uh string trimmer i like i like the husqvarna trimmers this is a 525 ls the best one i ever had was a 326 ls that was my all-time favorite it weighed nine pounds this one's a little heavier but still on the light side got good pallets uh good bounce of power and weight and it has the ergonomic handle i'm not saying there's not other good brands or trimmers it's just the one i prefer for me a trimmer has to perform well upside down or i don't want to use it yes i do take the guard off mine and when i'm edging i prefer the line to be a little bit longer so let me demonstrate how i'm going to edge this actually i'm going to demonstrate before i turn up so i'm going to edge and this will work on a sidewalk a flower bed tree ring whatever but some people there's two ways i see people primarily do it i'm going to show you one way some people put it up close to their shoulder and they're just using a finger but the idea is that you're going to get you're going to get the line at a 90 degree angle to make a nice clean edge i don't prefer this method it's not a bad method the way i do it the way i teach people to do it is i'm sitting there holding like this and it's just one quick move i flip it like that so i'm holding it and i flip hold it i flip it to me that's quicker than doing this you know but anyway how are we gonna do it i flip it i'm trying to get a 90 degree and i'm using my thumb on the trigger in that situation let me demonstrate what i just told you another thing it's very important to understand which way the head's uh spinning so you'll know which way the debris is going i like that with no guard i like these speed feet heads they're awesome and uh you know it makes it very fast to change the line out when you run out so anyway that's my setup let's get started working so [Music] now that i made my my perimeter past making the edge now i can buzz around it to get rid of that lip that i showed you where it sticks up a little higher where the mower didn't go all the way over there the other way you could do it is to do this first and then mow uh afterwards you know that would basically then at that point you could go ahead and go around the edge and then the mower would know how close he had to get to keep from having that lip but anyway the lips there so i'm gonna buzz around it and make it look good uh what we're trying to accomplish here we're trying to make a nice smooth transition from where the grass is mowed also a clean edge and i think we've accomplished that you can just see the contrast between the pine straw of course it could be freshened up in the green grass so i think it looks nice and when these crepe myrtles start blooming it'll look even nicer all right in this situation this is where a trampoline used to be you know how that goes sometimes see how tall that is that's actually bermuda grass that hadn't been mowed in i don't know how long anyway but the point being sometimes you end up with really tall thick grass and depending on the power of your trimmer you may be able to go through there and just wipe it out in a normal style but i'm going to show you a way that i like to approach when i have tall grass sometimes if your trimmer starts getting bogged down or tangled up in the grass i'm going to show you a different technique and i like to come in from on the top of the grass and and beat it down from the top and then get it you know once i get it beat down to a normal level then i can smooth it out so let me demonstrate that right now on this for the trampoline [Music] [Music] also um [Music] [Music] so [Music] um [Music] all right in that section to be honest with you that sometimes you get in there and you start weeding it's a little bit different than i thought some of that was thin enough where i could just kind of um go at it without coming in from the top if it's super thick grass and your trimmer starts bogging down then to me you come in from the top but in that situation basically what i had to do was sort of take it down layer by layer by layer but it allowed me to do one thing that i that i wasn't thinking about in a situation sometimes when you're trying to cover a large area now in that situation we could have just cut it with a lot more but sometimes whether it be on a big hill or whatever you need to cover a large area and what you want to do in that situation is just make long wide passes you know just keep it keep the trigger all full throttle and make long wide paths so that's kind of what i'm doing there take it down a layer and take it down a layer and take it down later and then try to smooth it out best you can again with that from now on now it looks presentable at least we can clear it up with a lawnmower moving forward another skill i think this helps make a yard look nice is sometimes there is a low spot in the yard or maybe something happens and there's a mistake with the lawnmower you hit a dip and it kind of scalps an area and you need to take the string trimmer to be able to smooth it out and make it look as presentable as possible in that situation so i'm going to show you how to do that now so you see right here where you see right here where my foot is this is significantly lower right here it's a dip now it needs to be filled in with topsoil or something to make it more level but the grass is probably two inches taller down inside of here and so i can smooth that out but what might also happen i'm going to make a bad spot in the yard just to show you how i'm going to try to fix it to level it out to minimize the damage when a place looks bad seeing that situation what we need to do is fix the problem but what we did was in in a a low spot and it may be a low spot that's 10 times that size where the mower can't get in there and cut it but you can make it nice and smooth with your string trimmer and a steady hand so now i'm gonna make a bad spot in the yard and show you you know or sometimes you hit that bump and it scouts the spot and you try to fix the damage [Music] hey [Music] all right so what happened there oh the mower hit a bump and it left a big scalp spot in the yard now how do i make that look as decent as possible [Applause] [Music] so it's going to grow back but you want to kind of fade it out you know where it goes from low to slightly higher until you get back to the normal level again you can't you can't erase what happened but you can smooth it out so it doesn't look so devastating all right i'm going to demonstrate around this tree ring basically going to be similar to a flower bed i want to go around it and then when they come back and level out the edge around this tree [Music] so [Music] in this situation you make the ring there may not be much of a lip but if there is you say i make that second pass around with my trimmer in a normal position to level out the edge so that you don't have you know a high area right here and then normal grass right here it also can help if you throw any pine straw or mulch out into the yard when you were doing the initial pass around edging it can help throw that back into the pile if you need to of course you could use a blower for that you don't have to gas it wide open when you're going around that second time you're just basically trying to clean up any lip that's left on the grass and it may not be necessary every time depends on how the mower was used all right in this situation you got a hill that's not safe to put a zero turn mower on so i'm gonna make those long wide passes on a hill i prefer usually to stand on the bottom of the hill and reach up you can you know in this situation you can do that and sort of walk up the hill or if you you get to the top you can get on the top of the hill and lean down but that to me that's a little bit harder leaning over from the top of the hill i'd rather stand up lower and and go high so let me demonstrate that [Music] ah another example where you got to use your string trimmer to kind of make a smooth transition so the mower can get the level part but up on that hill it's a little too steep so it's going to leave a little a little edge right there and you might take your trimmer through here and kind of smooth it out and make it look nice and clean and lastly we're going to show you how to edge a side wall and this is you know some people say oh you need to use a stick edger to edge a sidewall well i agree uh in in many cases that's the situation that that's the easiest tool to learn how to use to make a nice clean edge but sometimes when you're out there and you've got it's a little bit of edging to do it's easy just to use the same tool you got if you can make it look great then i think that's acceptable too plus the same skills you're using to edge a sidewalk you can use to edge tree rings edge flower beds so there's situations where in my opinion you need to learn how to edge with a string trimmer now this looks like a little bit of a war zone here um so that this overgrown and there's there's little debris and rocks and everything so i've got to be super careful again you want to make sure you understand which way the sticks and the debris are being thrown away from house away from people and hopefully away from yourself okay um so that situation and if it is really really bad like there is so overgrown you can't even find the edge of the sidewalk in that situation you do what i like to call a cheater edge okay and i might demonstrate this one time i like to take the trimmer and turn it at an angle and basically all i'm doing is just peeling the grass back until i get to the edge okay so i'm just skimming it back until i can actually get to the edge and then now i can actually see where the edge is i can i can turn it completely vertical and make an edge so in this situation i'm going to see if i can just go vertical and make a straight edge i may have to run over it twice it's a real short sidewalk because it's so overgrown and looks nasty [Music] [Music] oh in that situation i'm gonna run over and try to smooth it out but it is so overgrown it's actually it's hard to actually see where the edge is but i'm gonna clean it up and we'll see the finished product see how good i can make it [Music] [Music] that was not exactly your everyday edging job okay but i think that looks way improved i basically had to use it and this is one thing string trimmers are good for you can almost use them as an eraser if you've got a weed growing up in the crack of the sidewalk you just run over there and it buzzes them off i basically had to knock all that stuff back off the sidewalk to even find where an edge goes but you know compare that with what it did look like or what this edge looks like i think uh we made some significant improvements on that edge hey thanks for watching the video there are more skills i didn't demonstrate there's another video popping up now that has 10 skills some of the same ones but you can use a string trimmer as a blower you ever seen a situation where somebody already blew off the driveway and somebody come by and threw a few grass clippings out there you just get a long string and you use it as a blower also if you've got grass clippings left over that's clumping up in the yard you can use the string trimmer to disperse the glass grass clippings to make it not look so bad so there's a lot of uses for a string trimmer uh i've even mentioned in another video self defense if you get attacked by wasps when they come out of the privacy fence and they just go crazy after you you have to sometimes defend yourself with the string trimmer so anyway enjoy the video over 600 videos on the channel you go to lightcarelife.com to check out resources for those of you in the lawn care business talk to you later [Music] bye

Channel: Lawn Care Life

Views: 251,147

Keywords: string trimmer, weed eater, weed wacker, how to use a string trimmer, how to, how to use a weed eater, lawn edging, how to edge with a string trimmer, how to edge with a weed eater, strimmer, whipper snipper, jason creel, lawn care life, how to edge a tree ring, how to edge a sidewalk, how to edge a lawn, how to edge

Id: G-RQHtby9ZY

Length: 20min 28sec (1228 seconds)

Published: Mon May 31 2021