# Bermuda Scalping question



## rockwalltxguy (Oct 1, 2021)

A little background, So this is the 1st year I'm going to scalp my grass truly low. This upcoming season will be my 1st with a reel mower so I want to start off at about 1/2" or so that way I can maintain it at between 5/8"-3/4". Lawn and home are 3 years old. Not super flat lawn yet so will be working on leveling potentially this year. Grass is Tif419. Had a guy come out and quote me and when I asked him what equipment he was going to use he told me it was a commercial Toro push mower. It's my understanding that the lowest toros can go is about 1". He claims though on the lowest setting he will be scalping to dirt? I don't want to pay this guy to come out and mow only to find out his idea of "scalping" is like 1 1/2" and I end up having to do it myself with the reel mower putting stress on my equipment. Have any of you heard of a toro push mower mowing to dirt even though the listed lowest height it will cut is 1"?


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## JLavoe (Jun 8, 2020)

The guy might have one of those "******* fraze mower" blades on there.. with the bolts on the ends of it that really tears up stolons out of the ground. Who knows though.. he could be maintaining bermuda lawns at 3" and the lowest setting could be his interpretation of a "scalp".

15k sq ft? I'd look into burning it off since it's a sizeable area.. check with your fire dept or local officials if you need a permit or just a heads up. You could scalp it yourself, but it's a ton of material to remove and deal with disposing of. Just know that any scalp calls for a backlap of your reel.


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## FATC1TY (Jul 12, 2017)

Find it kind of laughable to pay someone to scalp bermuda.

Maybe find someone to come clean it up, that's the real work.

Use your reel, make sure you aren't full of rocks and crap, and do a pass or two if you aren't already low. It's really not a big deal. The whole, "excessive wear" is severely over blown by residential owners. You'll be cutting like hell without, and even with pgr, less than these mowers are designed for.

Scalp it, give it the oil change if you hadn't, and backlap it. If it's beyond that, scalp and have an appointment or date for a grind. It's not hard to work that out. Regardless you'll want to backlap it a few times a season anyways.. a beer, and a few songs on the speaker and you'll be good as new.

If you don't have a rotary to suck it up after the scalp, I'd suggest renting or buying a cheap one. You'll need it anyways.


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## rockwalltxguy (Oct 1, 2021)

Currently my grass is sitting at about 1 1/2". Guy quoted me like $125 to scalp, bag, and carry away the clippings. I figured it's worth paying that rather than having to mess with it myself. I've got a Honda rotary that's practically brand new that I could do clean up if I decided to scalp myself but I don't particularly like the idea of bagging up 12-15 bags of clippings. What I don't want is to pay him $125 and then I end up having to complete his work for him afterwards.


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## Zimmerman (May 20, 2019)

This guy is going to rip you off. No push mower is going to get below where you wAnt to mow. You either want a reel mower or burn your yard. Don't even think about a rotary mower if you're going to start out reel mowing


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## CenlaLowell (Apr 21, 2017)

This guy is definitely about to rip you off. No rotary that I know of is going below one inch. You can do this yourself, but scalping is alot of work. I scalp to one inch and maintain at 2 inches.


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## Spammage (Apr 30, 2017)

I have a rotary that can cut to 3/4" and there are some that will go down to 1/2". That being said, he might not have one. Ask him the model of the mower he will be using and you can search the true specs online. I am guessing you will be doing more work than he will after he's done, so keep that in mind before paying him that kind of cash.


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## Phids (Sep 24, 2020)

I have a Toro push mower and scalped last year on my T419 lawn. Mine can go lower than the stated 1" or whatever fairly easily simply by going beyond the pre-cut notches on the wheels.

However, I think there are other problems with this plan to hire this guy for your yard. First, the "scalping" done with a push Toro will not go quite as low or as even as a reel mower, because if the hoc is set *too* low, the blade could dig into the dirt in places (e.g. around hills or bumps) and cause equipment problems.

Second, scalping and bagging that much grass on a 15k yard would take forever with just a push mower. Last year on my ~5k lawn, I scalped down from probably around 2" to as low as I could over four separate dates and filled up probably 8 Home Depot lawn bags with clippings. It's just too slow unless he has someone else following up later on a riding mower sucking up and disposing of the grass clippings.

My guess is that if he "scalps" your lawn, he's not going to be going as low as you want.


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## Bombers (Jul 14, 2020)

At 15k, even if going down to 1 inch, it will save the bulk of the legwork assuming you are at like 2-2.5 right now. You can do a couple finish passes from 1 to 0.5 with your reel.


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## Redtwin (Feb 9, 2019)

Depending on your current height, even taking it down to 1" and bagging it all is well worth $125. My biggest concern would be how effective he will be at bagging and cleaning it all up. I have just under 12K of Tifway 419 and when I scalp from 1/2" to just under a 1/4", I fill at least a dozen of the 40-gallon garbage bags. That's with only taking off a 1/4" at a time.

What I recommend is bumping your reel mower up and start scalping it little by little now. You probably still have at least another month until green up. It'll give you some practice on the new mower before the season kicks off and break the job up into small manageable chunks. If you have a grass catcher use it. If not, then use a rotary to suck up the clippings like @FATC1TY recommended.


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## rockwalltxguy (Oct 1, 2021)

I do have the grass catcher. That was going to be my next question. As of right now I'm sitting at about 1 1/2" height. I thought maybe I could cut it down over the next 3-4 weeks to my desired scalp height without causing any issues. If I were to do this it won't cause it to green up too early will it? I doubt we will have any more frosts as I'm in North Texas and by March it's usually in the 70s every day.


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## Redtwin (Feb 9, 2019)

Is there a such thing as green up too early?  I would start doing it a little at a time. As long as you are not pushing lots of new top growth with nitrogen you should be fine. Scalp is great but no fertilizer just yet. It will green up earlier if you scalp it because it will allow the sun to get to the soil and warm it faster than if it was shaded with grass.


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## FATC1TY (Jul 12, 2017)

Yeah take your new rotary, and take a little off once a week, or as much as you feel comfortable of with the work and mess.

Once the rotary won't handle the last inch. Knock down the reel, and give it a go, use the rotary to clean up the rest.

I have 6k to scalp and when I do this I rarely have a pile of bags of clippings at once.


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## rotolow (May 13, 2020)

I kinda scalp 35k every year. And by kinda I mean one year I did a single scalp over the course of a weekend and even up with a 8x8x10' pile of clippings which I had a hell of a time getting rid of. It was terrible, never again.

Now I scalp over the course of about a month slowly lowering the HOC down to ~1 inch and let the clippings fall where they may. Effectively turning them into sawdust.


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## cglarsen (Dec 28, 2018)

rotolow said:


> I kinda scalp 35k every year. And by kinda I mean one year I did a single scalp over the course of a weekend and even up with a 8x8x10' pile of clippings which I had a hell of a time getting rid of. It was terrible, never again.
> 
> Now I scalp over the course of about a month slowly lowering the HOC down to ~1 inch and let the clippings fall where they may. Effectively turning them into sawdust.


I've been there with massive clipping pile that does not readily decay. What month are you scalping now - pre-growing season or during the summer?


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## Redtwin (Feb 9, 2019)

I scalp as soon as I see any hint of new growth. Last year it was February 9 but this year will obviously be later with all the cold weather we are having. I would think North Texas would be mid-March for @rockwalltxguy.


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## Theycallmemrr (May 16, 2019)

cglarsen said:


> rotolow said:
> 
> 
> > I kinda scalp 35k every year. And by kinda I mean one year I did a single scalp over the course of a weekend and even up with a 8x8x10' pile of clippings which I had a hell of a time getting rid of. It was terrible, never again.
> ...


I wait until the chance of frost has disappeared. In my area its 2 April. I will probably start bringing it down a little bit so its not so labor intensive.


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## Spammage (Apr 30, 2017)

Here in N TX, I've scalped as early as 2/15, but typically it's past mid-March and as far as I'm concerned, the later the better. The earlier you scalp, the more you need to worry about late frosts. I've had to double scalp twice in the last 5 years, so never again. I will wait until at least mid-March and likely later to scalp.


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## JayGo (Jun 13, 2019)

Another option you have is to take the $125 you're ready to pay someone else and instead use it (plus a few more bucks) to get yourself a rotary. You will need one for "vacuum" jobs such as picking up after a scalp, picking up leaves, acorns, etc…. And you'll need to scalp again next year. You might even want a mid season reset, too. Paying every time you want your lawn scalped sounds costly.

Scalping is a messy/dusty job. I put my face mask on, grab my 40-gallon trash can, a box of trash bags, and I scalp with the reel. I then use the rotary to vacuum the clippings. I keep the trash can near me as I vacuum to make it quicker to empty the mower bag. I use a Gorilla cart to haul the filled up bags to my truck.


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## Mightyquinn (Jan 31, 2017)

I personally don't think scalping is that labor intensive as you are basically just walking and dumping relatively light clippings into a bag. Yes, it's dirty but nothing a leaf blower and a shower can't fix. If you start early in the season and break it into a few days/weeks it's not all that bad. I am probably going to start my scalping today as it's suppose to be in the 70's. I usually start in mid to late February as the temps are starting to rise and we get more nice days. I'm not too worried about freezing temperatures as the soil will still stay above freezing plus it will be exposed to the sun more causing it to hold more heat.

I don't think a rotary mower is that important to a scalp. I ended up selling mine as I never used it as my greens mower was able to collect a majority of the clippings. What I found to work best is to mow when the grass is a little damp as it prevents that grass clippings from blowing all over and makes picking them up a lot easier. All this dried dormant material just blows around when it's dry if you add a little bit of moisture it really helps with all the dust and dirtiness of the whole job.


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## rockwalltxguy (Oct 1, 2021)

Thanks all. I did a little test patch at the back of my lawn using a combination of my reel and rotary. I think I'm going to save myself the money and do it myself each weekend over the next month and do my final scalp mid March. I can take my Honda down to 3/4" which when I tested it took it down to dirt mostly. Then I will do a final pass with the reel at 7/16" or so and use the rotary to suck up any of the clippings I missed with the reel because I plan this year to maintain HOC of about 3/4"


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## JayGo (Jun 13, 2019)

@rockwalltxguy, man, my dumb *** somehow missed the part where you mention you already have a rotary. Sorry about that.

Personally, I'm a "rip off the band aid" type of guy, and I just scalp it down all at once. Either way, you will fill up a lot of bags if your disposing of them that way. I could never, EVER just use a leaf blower to clear the clippings.
Either way you do it, it'll be great. 👍🏼


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## atticus (Dec 30, 2021)

I've enjoyed getting familiar with my new reel over the past couple weekends and just taking it down a little bit more each time. More using it as an excuse to putter around in the yard than anything else, but I'm already down to an inch so I'll probably just keep going. I'm tossing the clippings on a compost pile I've got going as a base for some raised bed planters I'm eventually going to get around to making.


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## rotolow (May 13, 2020)

cglarsen said:


> rotolow said:
> 
> 
> > I kinda scalp 35k every year. And by kinda I mean one year I did a single scalp over the course of a weekend and even up with a 8x8x10' pile of clippings which I had a hell of a time getting rid of. It was terrible, never again.
> ...


Did my first run yesterday. I'll hit it again in a couple of weeks. I'll be down as low as I can get by March 1st.

For reference this was the nightmare I was left with when trying to scalp all at once:


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## jasonbraswell (Aug 18, 2019)

rotolow said:


> I kinda scalp 35k every year. And by kinda I mean one year I did a single scalp over the course of a weekend and even up with a 8x8x10' pile of clippings which I had a hell of a time getting rid of. It was terrible, never again.
> 
> Now I scalp over the course of about a month slowly lowering the HOC down to ~1 inch and let the clippings fall where they may. Effectively turning them into sawdust.


This sounds like a good plan to me. 
Plan to start this week.


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