Reddit reviews Toro Lawn Striping System

With this

So he loves cutting the grass or prides himself on a beautiful lawn?

If the latter, try this: Toro lawn striper

Or you could get him a broadcast spreader so he can lay down fertilizer/overseed/etc.

If he just likes cutting the grass, perhaps bluetooth headphones for some tunes while mowing?

I found this on amazon before starting the project for 105$ Toro Lawn Striping System https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004ZKXYUO/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_49GRzbJBMH9RP

It's a sand-filled roller, basically. Check it out.

You need some special (but reasonably prices) equipment to get a really quality baseball diamond looking pattern on your lawn. There's simply no way to do it with a regular mower.

With regular mowing you can create a general pattern but you'll never get a really distinct checkerboard because the checkerboard effect (when you see it on a baseball field) is created using a special tool that forces the grass to lay a certain way on each pass. When you see a light square and then a dark square what you're seeing is not just the pattern of mowing but the overlay of two paths the mower/tool took that changed the direction the grass is bent (and thus the way light reflects off of it).

To achieve that same look at home you need to get a striping kit for your mower (you can pick them up for push mowers for around $75-100, like this one) or for riding mowers for around $250 or so (there's a whole website devoted to them).

One thing you want to avoid is getting a drum-based lawn roller. What you want is a small and relatively light striping kit or roller. There are big rollers that start at 250 or so pounds for a hand pushed model and break 500 pounds, easy, for a tractor pulled roller. These are way too big for residential use and are intended for things like soil compaction and correction (e.g. smoothing dirt before a heavy seeding or leveling soil after varmints have tunnels and disturbed your lawn). Using that kind of heavy duty roller on your lawn every week wouldn't just be a pain in the ass but really rough on your lawn.

The other big consideration, one which I didn't even think of until the end here, is the type of grass. Some grasses stripe very well (like bluegrass and rye) and some stripe incredibly poorly that you shouldn't even bother (like bermuda grass, if it stripes at all it lasts like a day or two, tops).

Anyways, if this is an area of interest to you, the internet is full of lawn enthusiasts who take their lawns as seriously as the groundskeepers at Yankee Stadium do. Searching for stuff like "best cold hardy grass for striping" or "best lawn roller for [x kind of] grass" will give you tons of information.

You would be correct, that would be my Christmas present from last year. My Toro Lawn Striping Kit. And as long as the birthday boy gets some love too, i'm fine with lawn talks lol - https://www.amazon.com/Toro-20601-Lawn-Striping-System/dp/B004ZKXYUO

This is the one I have https://smile.amazon.com/Toro-20601-Lawn-Striping-System/dp/B004ZKXYUO/

This or anything similar will work. https://www.amazon.com/Toro-20601-Lawn-Striping-System/dp/B004ZKXYUO

learned it from the lawn care nut. He has great videos on the subject

you can rig something up for your mower but I just went and bought a kit

I second doing the outer perimeter last. Most people here aren't using a zero turn on their lawn, they're going to be using one of the regular rotary walk behind mowers that most homeowners use.

As for getting stripes, you can get them to show up better and last longer if you attach a striping kit to your mower. I personally use the Toro Striping System with my mower. Attached, it looks like this. Basicially all you need is something heavy to drag behind your mower to bend the grass down... some people construct their own using PVC, and some people just let the little rock guard flap do it (it won't last nearly as long without any weight, though).

Using the Toro Striping System on my lawn, I get results like this in my backyard (Nevermind that debris, it's from the leaves I blew into the grass to mulch up). My front lawn, using the same mower and technique, looks like this.

As always, I recommend doing as many turns as you can on the sidewalk/pavement and not on your lawn. When I do the outer ring I alternate directions there as well. Clockwise for the outer ring, then Counter-clockwise for the inner ring (or vice-versa), that way you get alternating colors there too. That's how we cut fairways & greens at the golf course. The main area first with whatever pattern, then clockwise outer ring, counter-clockwise inner ring, and exit.

Also, if your grass is full of weeds, the stripes don't show up as much because you can't bend crabgrass or clover one direction or the other. It also shows up better on longer grass, which, if you're a member of /r/lawncare... you probably don't cut your lawn very short anyway. It's just harder to bend very short grass and keep it bent.

And for obvious reasons, I recommend either mulching or bagging the clippings if you want the lines to show up nice and clear, as you won't be able to see them as well if they have dead grass sitting on top if you're using the side discharge port on your mower.