In the springtime, there’s usually excellent weather. The sun is shining, the air feels refreshing, and the flowers are growing. Those aren’t the only things growing when the seasons change.
You’ve probably noticed, especially during the rainy seasons, that the grass starts growing fast. But as frequently as you keep the lawn mowed, you don’t notice right away. You’ll notice when you see certain spots on the lawn grow much faster than the rest of the lawn.
Husqvarna’s Automower has a solution for that, and it’s spiral cutting: their solution to keeping all of your grass leveled all of the time. It’s one of the most useful features of Husqvarna’s Automower. And today, we’re going to dive into exactly what it is, and what it means for your lawn.
What is Spiral Cutting, anyway?
This feature is found in certain models of the Husqvarna Automower series. When the mower runs normally, it’ll mow in random directions.
But when the autonomous lawn mower detects that certain grass spots on the lawn are higher than usual, it’ll focus on that specific spot. As the mower is there, it’ll mow that spot on the lawn until it detects that the grass is as leveled as the rest of the lawn. The mower will adjust its cutting speed and power as needed while it mows.
“But how can the mower tell how high the grass is?”
For starters, the Automower doesn’t literally measure how high the grass is. Instead, it looks for blade resistance when it mows. If the mower blade senses that a section of the grass needs some extra effort, the mower will then spirally cut that section of the grass down and continue as normal once it’s finished.
When Should You Adjust the Spiral Cut Feature?
You can use this feature on your lawn right out of the box. The default intensity setting for this feature will be ‘medium’. Whenever you want, you can adjust the intensity; choose from low, medium, or high.
When you should adjust the setting depends on how often you let the Automower mow the lawn. If you’re consistent about your mowing, you can adjust the setting to be low. You may not even need to have it on at all.
If the mowing schedule is infrequent or your yard is large, leaving the intensity at medium may be ideal. You should also let the setting stay at medium if you’ve just acquired the mower and it’s still mapping the area of your lawn.
Read: How long does it take a robotic lawn mower to map an area?
You’ll probably want to set the intensity to high if you have an uneven lawn. That way, when the mower travels over small dips in the lawn, it will get the grass at a good level.
Read: Mowing uneven terrain with a robotic lawn mower
This video will show you how to adjust the setting as needed.
Benefits of The Spiral Cut Feature
Pro #1: Great for the rarely mowed sections of the lawn
The biggest selling point of this feature is the assurance you get that you’ll always have an evenly cut lawn. Even if you haven’t mowed a particular section of the lawn in a while, the Automower will still even the grass out.
Pro #2: Adjust the frequency to match your lawn’s growth
As we mentioned earlier, you can choose the intensity of the spiral cutting. Not only is this great for uneven lawns, but it’s also great for the parts of your lawn that don’t get as much sunlight. The mower will automatically use and unuse the spiral cutting feature to match the length of the lawn.
Whenever you need to, you can also set the feature to manual instead of automatic. Either way, the mower accommodates the entire lawn’s growth rate, adjusting its performance when needed.
Possible Disadvantages?
Con #1: The feature could activate when it’s not needed
The grass doesn’t have to be super high or tough for the mower to start spiral cutting. The mower can and likely will do it with medium-height grass as well.
While that may not seem like an issue, it does mean that the mower could start spiral cutting when it doesn’t really need to. Even when the difference in grass height from one section of the lawn to another is barely noticeable, the mower might still spiral cut. It’d be spiral cutting for essentially no reason for a little bit instead of just mowing the whole lawn.
Again, you can manually use the spiral cutting feature to avoid this.
Con #2: Accidental “crop circles”
We’re not saying it’s aliens…. but it’s probably aliens.
You probably won’t encounter this issue. (Just as you probably won’t encounter aliens.) But you could notice after a while that the spiral cutting might cause the lawn to look like there are crop circle patterns. Either rock the otherworldly vibe or change your settings. Up to you.
Will the Automower Know Where it Already Mowed?
With the mower putting its focus on slightly overgrown areas on the lawn, you’re probably wondering if it’ll mow the same areas it already mowed once the spiral cutting is done.
Thankfully, there’s a lot more to the excellence of Husqvarna’s Automower than spiral cutting. One of its other great features is the use of GPS. By using this, the mower will know which spots on the lawn have and haven’t been mowed yet. It also uses GPS to map out your lawn and remembers it so the mower will have a virtual border.
Read: Do autonomous lawn mowers know where they’ve mowed?
These features combined ensure that all of your grass gets cut evenly, leaving beautiful results across your lawn.
Spiral Cutting: Your Guarantee for a Fully Even Lawn!
Lawn mowing should be simple. But simplicity leaves room for a little error. Thanks to spiral cutting, you won’t miss out on any more missed, overgrown spots on your lawn.
Check out some great options for autonomous mowers for your lawn today!