Old-fashioned lawn mowers prove to be economical, eco-friendly option

Your body " not gasoline " is directly responsible for the whir of the blades in a old-fashioned reel lawn mower, leaving you instantly rewarded with a pleasant snick-snick-snick sound and the sweet smell of a freshly trimmed lawn instead of a choking mist of Earth-hurting guilt fumes.

Gas-powered lawn mowers have engines, levers and all sorts of parts and pieces, making them a pretty daunting (and expensive) purchase for small lawn owners and home renters.

But despite the current mechanized utopia, push-powered reel lawn mowers are still manufactured and easily available at most big-box home-improvement stores.

It feels good to make a purchase the planet agrees with. That, combined with the reel mowers' low price " around $100 " and an urge to laugh at all the suckers lined up with gas cans at stations every weekend, made a buyer out of me.

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Karen Cobb, spokeswoman for Lowe's, said the company has carried reel lawn mowers since 1991, and has noticed a recent trend toward their use, although they have traditionally been more popular in Western parts of the United States and in urban areas that boast smaller lawns.

"Generally speaking, reel mowers are more popular in areas where average yard size is less than 8,000 square feet," she said.

Cobb said yard size and grass type are the biggest issues that could affect the performance of a reel lawn mower, which she said doesn't work as effectively on thicker grasses like zoysia, St. Augustine and Bermuda " the most common lawn grass in Oklahoma. "Joe Wertz

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