If you’ve ever walked through a neighborhood full of property owners that take lawn care seriously, you might wonder what exactly they do to make their yards look so good. In my experience, the difference between a good looking lawn and a fantastic one is edging. Giving your lawn crisp edges where it meets sidewalks, driveways, or other obstacles is one of the best ways to give it that clean and bold look.
I find that a lot of people are wondering how to edge a lawn without an edger since most people I know don’t have one. As you might have guessed, edging-specific tools can be outside of people’s budgets since they usually don’t get used every time you mow. Luckily there are some pretty good alternatives to edgers that you can use to hone the borders of your lawn to perfection, and I’m going to talk about the different options below.
How to Edge a Lawn Without an Edger – My Go-To Alternative
I’ll tell you what, when it comes down to how to edge a lawn without an edger, your string trimmer will actually do a great job and is my favorite alternative. Over the years, my string trimmer has been a staple for me while taking care of my yard. Since I use it so often, I’ve ended up testing it out for a bunch of different tasks. One of those things is edging my yard. You might not see how some spinning trimmer line can get through enough material to make a difference, but it really does.
Electric and gas-powered trimmers alike work well for lawn edging in a pinch. However, if you’re going to give it a shot there are a couple of things to keep in mind. The first thing to know is that you’ll end up kicking up a pretty noticeable amount of debris. From little rocks, to sticks, to plain old dirt, your string trimmer will be slicing and throwing material left and right. Definitely be sure to put some safety glasses on before doing this, and wear long pants unless you enjoy having your shins abused.
The last thing to consider is that you won’t get a nice even trim until you practice a bit. It’s really easy to accidentally scalp little patches of your lawn when using a string trimmer to do your edging. To do a good job, you need to approach the edges carefully at the correct angle and go slowly and steadily. But, after a little bit of trial and error, you’ll find that a string trimmer can cut a pretty clean edge without too much trouble. Just be ready to burn through a little extra trimmer line and kick up a bunch of dust.
How to Cut Grass Edges Without a Trimmer (7 Other Alternatives)
If you don’t have an edger or a string trimmer to cut the edges of your grass, there are a handful of other tools that you can use. Almost all of these tools run on muscle alone, but if you’re willing to put in the work they will get the job done. For those of you wondering how to cut grass edges without a trimmer, I’ll describe some of the pros and cons of each alternative below.
Flat Shovel
You can use pretty much any kind of flat shovel to give your lawn a nice edge. While it helps to use a shovel on the wider side, it doesn’t matter whether you have a spade or a trenching shovel as long as it has a square edge. Often used by landscapers, this method is tried and true.
The best part about using a flat shovel is that you probably already have one laying around, and it’s really easy to be precise with your edging. Also, you can remove a lot of turf at once with a shovel. If you have a few sections of lawn that need some serious cleaning up, you can get the job done with a flat shovel.
The downside here is time and exertion. Sure you can be precise, but it’s going to take much longer to dig out the whole perimeter of your yard by hand. I’ve done it this way and it’s no easy feat. But if you have a smaller yard or are feeling especially strong, this classic method won’t disappoint.
Half Moon Edger
Working pretty much the same way as a flat shovel would, these lawn edgers have a wooden handle attached to a blade that’s in the shape of a half-moon. They’re shaped like this so that you can put alternating force on the blade. Cutting in a rocking motion, you can put weight on either side of the blade to saw through rough patches of turf.
The pros and cons of using a half-moon edger are the same as with a flat shovel. Yes, you can give your lawn a crisp edge, but you’ll be working very hard for quite a while to do so. Also, you’re more likely to have to go out and buy this tool whereas you might already have a shovel handy.
The only other drawback in my opinion is that cleanup is a bit tricky with a half-moon edger. If you are cutting off a good amount of material from the edges of your lawn, you can’t really scoop it up with the edger. You’ll probably have to use a rake or shovel. And if you’re using a flat shovel for cleanup, you might as well save a couple bucks and use it for the edging as well.
Manual Lawn Edger
Also known as rotary edgers, these tools are great for maintaining an already crisp edge, but don’t work as well for cutting new edges into an overgrown lawn.
Manual lawn edgers work by spinning a circular serrated blade and are meant to be used on lawn edges that meet pavement of some sort. If you just need to do some minor edging this tool is a great option. However, if you’re doing some serious edging, or have a larger yard, this might not be the best choice. To get a good result with rotary edgers, you need to go back and forth over the same spot multiple times before you get a clean cut. If you have a big yard you’ll exhaust yourself like you would with a shovel.
Reciprocating Saw
If you are specifically interested in how to edge a sidewalk without an edger, a reciprocating saw makes a really good alternative. Though they are mostly used for construction purposes, a handful of savvy landscapers will use reciprocating saws to make quick work of lawn edging. Lightweight and known to cut through anything with ease, you can find people using these saws on a ton of different projects.
There are two big downfalls to using reciprocating saws though. The first is price. Most decent reciprocating saws cost at least a hundred dollars and aren’t always a practical buy for the average property owner. If you have one, you can definitely use it, but I wouldn’t go and buy one just for lawn edging.
The next con of using a reciprocating saw is the strain on your back. In order to cut an edge in your lawn with this type of saw, you’ll need to be fully bent over and pretty much waddling along the entire perimeter of your yard. Plus, if you don’t have a cordless model, you’ll have to constantly move the extension cord out of the way. With that being said, people use this approach for a reason: reciprocating saws cut through turf like butter.
Lawn Shears
Nearly as classic of an approach as a flat shovel, edging with lawn edging shears and/or grass shears can be a good way to tidy your yard up.
Edging shears have a pair of blades that sit at a ninety-degree angle at the bottom of their handle. The idea is to walk along and snip any loose or overhanging blades of grass without having to reach all the way to the ground.
Like rotary edgers, I wouldn’t suggest using these if you have a lot of turf that needs to get cut away. The same is true for grass shears. You could use them, but it would be pretty much the same as edging with classroom scissors. While you could get a great forearm workout, your knees will pay the price. Still, you can definitely make do with shears in small or medium-sized yards that don’t require much soil removal.
Utility Knife
Most of the time when you see somebody using a utility knife with their lawn, it’s when they’re throwing down some new sod. If you haven’t put sod down before, you would be surprised at how easily it can be cut with your average box cutter.
If you don’t mind getting down and dirty, you could trace out the edges of your yard with a box cutter. This would be quite labor-intensive, but if you have a small yard or new sod, you’d be able to get the job done relatively easily. Like the other manual edging alternatives, you’re guaranteed to end up with a very neat edge this way.
Lawn Mower
Last but not least, a lawn mower makes a pretty decent alternative to most edgers. While mowers aren’t intended to be used for edging, there are a couple of things you can do to get them to shave down the borders of your lawn. Still, it really depends on what the layout of your yard is. If you don’t have a really level yard with a bunch of straight edges and neat borders, you might struggle to cut out a good edge.
It’s also not as easy to maneuver a lawn mower around the perimeter of some yards. For example, yards that have boulevards with curbs on one side can be really tough to edge with a lawn mower. All in all, though some people might be able to leave their lawn with a perfect trim after only using their lawn mower, most of the time an additional tool improves the look of the edges quite a bit.
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