# Grass for a robotic mower



## monkeygrass (Jul 30, 2017)

I realize this is a borderline blasphemous scenario to bring up, but...

I currently have Zorro zoysia cut at slightly under .5". It looks nice and I am a fan of the many benefits associated with the maintenance/hobby. That said, my landscape has a lot of things vying for my attention and I'd like to daydream about what the best possible warm season lawn could currently be with today's robotic mowers.

Assuming a Landriod mower is cutting at 1.6" in central Texas, what grass varieties are worth top consideration? My initial thought is Palisades zoysia would look better at 1.6" than the Zorro.


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## DFWLawnNut (Jul 7, 2020)

Id be surprised if the robotic mowers could cut zoysia very well. It gets THICK. My rotary mowers struggle with my Emerald Zoysia, but maybe if its cutting every day or every other day it might work. I would think St. Augustine would be a good candidate for it or even Bermuda.


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## Spammage (Apr 30, 2017)

DFWLawnNut said:


> Id be surprised if the robotic mowers could cut zoysia very well. It gets THICK.


This ^^^


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## sam36 (Apr 14, 2020)

I looked at robotic mowers a couple of years ago. The biggest turn off for me was that even though they were GPS guided, they still required a buried perimeter wire for "safety". There are probably tons of videos on youtube of people doing reviews. At least on the models I looked at, the "blade" was a plastic disk with razor blades around it. So it certainly should "cut".


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## DFWLawnNut (Jul 7, 2020)

sam36 said:


> I looked at robotic mowers a couple of years ago. The biggest turn off for me was that even though they were GPS guided, they still required a buried perimeter wire for "safety". There are probably tons of videos on youtube of people doing reviews. At least on the models I looked at, the "blade" was a plastic disk with razor blades around it. So it certainly should "cut".


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## lucas287 (Jun 3, 2018)

I may be one of the few that has ACTUAL experience with this. My backyard is cut almost exclusively by my Worx Landroid. In short, it's fantastic. I will highlight some scattered brained thoughts:

* I still reel cut my front yard because of my privacy fence creating grief with the aforementioned perimeter wire. I double spray PGR around the perimeter and then make a pass with my reel/edge once a week. That's it, period. HOC is just under 1". I can go lower with it, but the quality of cut goes down a bit.

*My backyard is about 2,500 sq ft. Not huge, but it's more than 2/3rd of my total lawn. That's what was eating my time. Now that I just mow the front yard, I might spend 75-90 minutes total/week on lawn care.

*As mentioned, it uses a plastic disc with 3 razor blades attached. They freely swivel in case they hit something other than grass so that aren't rigid and brake. The ones I use have two different mounting holes. This means I get 4 different cutting edges out of one blade. Every week I turn them which means 3 blades last one month.

*Dog turds. yep, it smacks em. I've been a habit of picking up poop every day for years though, but sometimes I forget.

*I have it mow M-F, from 9 AM to 2 PM. This keeps maintenance down even more because the dew is mostly dried up by then. For a while I let it mow over night, but the wet grass from the dew would coat the underside.

*Scalping. That's a thing of the past! At least scalping due to the growth rate of the grass. It will occasionally pull up a runner here or there, but nothing worse than my dogs do.

*Cut frequency (i believe) is the BIGGEST deciding factor in how thick/dense grass gets. My backyard is even thicker now than when it was previously on PGR.

*Less fire ant beds. I guess because it's always disturbing them?

*Winter overseed much more enjoyable. I like PRG, but I hate how fast it grows in Central Texas from Dec - May. It's mind blowing how fast it grows. With the Worx this past year, it was fantastic.

*If we are expecting company, I mow it with my reel just to lay down some stripes 

*Since Zorro is a matrella variety, I would say that it would cut fine. I have tifsport/celebration backyard and it has no issues.

All in all, my $500 craigslist find of a Worx Landroid (that had never been unboxed BTW) has a heck of deal. My wife rolled her eyes when I bought it last year!! But, she loves that thing!


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## DFWLawnNut (Jul 7, 2020)

Yeah from what I've seen the worx unit is much better than the Husqvarna. I have no problems with robot anything, my house has two that do all of the vacuuming and mopping lol. I might eventually do the same thing you did for the backyard.


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## Benwag (May 28, 2020)

@HungrySoutherner has his Bermuda cut low with a robotic mower, if he has any input


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## Sbcgenii (May 13, 2018)

I would love to have one of those robot mowers! Reel mow on special occasions while the robot does the grunt work.


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## rjw0283 (May 11, 2020)

I guess I enjoy cutting my yard too much to ever consider. They are interesting, maybe I'm too much of a control freak.


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## critterdude311 (Apr 21, 2018)

lucas287 said:


> I may be one of the few that has ACTUAL experience with this. My backyard is cut almost exclusively by my Worx Landroid. In short, it's fantastic. I will highlight some scattered brained thoughts:
> 
> * I still reel cut my front yard because of my privacy fence creating grief with the aforementioned perimeter wire. I double spray PGR around the perimeter and then make a pass with my reel/edge once a week. That's it, period. HOC is just under 1". I can go lower with it, but the quality of cut goes down a bit.
> 
> ...


Interesting, how often do the blades need to get changed, is it a throw away or do you sharpen them?


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## lucas287 (Jun 3, 2018)

They're little double edged blades about the size of box knife blade. I turn/rotate them every week. That keeps em nice and fresh and the grass looking decent enough. FAR better quality of cut than a rotary but obviously not as nice as a reel. About like a reel that needs to be backlapped.

https://www.ebay.com/i/143642605144?chn=ps&norover=1&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-117182-37290-0&mkcid=2&itemid=143642605144&targetid=915282956376&device=c&mktype=pla&googleloc=9027958&poi=&campaignid=10455986299&mkgroupid=104612010940&rlsatarget=aud-622524042878la-915282956376&abcId=2146002&merchantid=101673480&gclid=Cj0KCQjwgo_5BRDuARIsADDEntQ3axRSe_qLZxUfpnuDhWc1uTgWQzQC08oJDMLJCzIKcVeAxnUTqrwaAvWjEALw_wcB


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## HungrySoutherner (May 29, 2018)

The husqvarna automower will maintain zoysia just fine. With the fairway kit installed you can get it below the base HOC .8" down to .39" HOC with the same rules that you would apply to reel mowing any lawn needing to be flat. Honestly the robot mower and turf quality are even better (I have tifgrand and 419 bermuda in my yard ) when you continue to use PGR just from a growth habit and density stand point when you are going low. The only thing you would take into consideration with Zoysia would be staying on top of keeping fresh blades on the cutting unit. You can dial the cutting time up and down depending on how fast the turf is growing, with the end goal being that you really just want it shaving the grass daily and not taking it down. Once its on top of maintaining it daily you really won't hear it mowing a whole lot. Mine is still happily mowing away at .39" everyday. The biggest thing I discovered was what happens with the grass growth habit, at least for bermuda, when you get into prime growing weather and the turf is unregulated and fully fed on Nitrogen. It was like over night I was seeing pulled and lifted grass in areas and didn't understand what was occuring. With bermuda being mowed low everyday and not regulated it reached a strange growth habit where the plant was doing everything it could to stretch and move, but because it wasn't being scalped it was maintaining its leaf nodes, and try to push from the stems, when the mower would come along as it got denser it would lift up the leaf mass and stem and then chop them on the next pass. If you were reel mowing in those conditions you'd basically be scalping and probably do and HOC reset, so the automower was essentially grooming on a daily basis. All of that cleared up when I put the yard back under regulation, no matter how dense it got, because the turf just got thicker and thicker without stretching. If you try the "reel low" automower experiment with PGR, expect a very dense turf. Because there is no roller laying the grass over when you mow, every bit of bare area gets very thick. Its just a shift in cultural practices that I'm still working out. Long winded answer though, its more than capable of handling zoysia.


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## mwemaxxowner (May 30, 2020)

I'm glad I found this thread! I was just contemplating the $799 Worx Landroid earlier today. I have a robotic pool vac, robot house vac, why not mower?? &#129315;

I would run it in my back yard I think. There is about 200' of privacy fence behind the house. I've never measured but it should be at or less than 1/4 acre. I'm not too concerned back there. I spend so much time and effort on the front and sides where I have sod I always seem to neglect this area. This thing might be a life saver for me at only $800. I just want something covering the sand back there, not too picky about it. If I love it I would maybe get one for the centipede in the front.


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## dsc123 (Mar 22, 2020)

I have the Autmower 115H running cutting TTTF. I don't imagine it would have any problems with Zoysia. It runs so often that the grass will never get long and it will just be cutting a fractional amount off the tips.

You might give it a short cut with your mower before setting up the Automower to avoid staring with it trying to get through a tall thick lawn. I didn't do that, and it took about a week to look even. Since then, its been perfect every day.


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