The Best Lawn Sweepers Reviews – Essential Tools For Your Lawn

Having a neat and tidy lawn without having an aching back or a hefty garden maintenance bill requires the use of a lawn sweeper. While there are many types, all have the same essential function of gathering leaves, twigs, and lawn cuttings into a collection bag for a clean and debris-free lawn.

If you are looking to buy a lawn sweeper for the first time, or wanting to upgrade or replace an older one, read on for all the information you need to know about the best lawn sweepers currently on the market.

In a hurry, here are our top pick for lawn sweepers.

• Best Push-along Lawn Sweeper: Agri-Fab 45-0218 Push Lawn Sweeper
• Best Tow-behind Lawn Sweeper: Brinly STS-427LXH Tow Behind Lawn Sweeper

Buying Guide

Here are some points to consider before you buy.

The Benefit Of Lawn Sweeping

Remove a buildup of thatch

This is the key advantage of lawn sweeping. It helps get rid of the accumulated thatch, especially in the winter. The decaying organic matter can be made up of dead lawn cuttings, loose roots, and leaves. Leaving all of that to sit on top of your lawn can suffocate it and stunt fresh growth.

Lawn sweeping can remove thatch without harming well-rooted grass, and allows your lawn to breathe and benefit more from light, water, and the nutrients it needs to thrive. Removing thatch will also prepare your lawn for aeration or re-seeding.

Cleaner Grass

Lawn sweeping can collect stray twigs, fallen leaves, pine needles, pine cones, lawn cuttings, and other pieces of small debris that sit on your lawn.

Remove the sand and salt that are blown onto your lawn from municipal snow plows

While it’s important to prepare our roads to safely handle snow, these treatments can have a negative impact when they find their way onto our lawns.

Keep your mower in good condition

Your lawn will be free from rocks or twigs that could get caught up in a mower’s blades and potentially damage it.

Do You Need a Lawn Sweeper?

If you have a lawn, the short answer to this is: yes!

Lawn sweepers are much less work to use than traditional methods of clearing your lawn, such as using a rake. Most gardeners dread having to rake up leaves because it is such a grueling task. Besides being time-consuming, it is a physically demanding task that wreaks havoc on your back and shoulders.

Raking can also be detrimental to the health of your lawn, pulling up healthy blades of grass from their roots and leaving unsightly marks on your lawn (SFGate).

By comparison, a lawn sweeper is gentler on your lawn, yet simultaneously more effective. The rotating bristles on a lawn sweeper are able to sweep up even small particles of dirt and debris without causing any harm to the lawn itself.

A lawn sweeper, compared with a rake, is also much less physically demanding, and many people even find it a pleasure to sweep their lawn. Lawn sweeping will be far less time consuming than raking and will also result in a clearer lawn.

Lawn sweepers are preferable to leaf blowers, which some gardeners use to clear their yards from gathering debris. While leaf blowers are easy to operate, they are not particularly effective at removing unwanted matter from your lawn.

Users of leaf blowers often find that they have spent the afternoon blowing all of the leaves on their lawn onto the road, only to find the very next day that all of the leaves have blown back again. Leaf blowers will not gather thatch from your lawn, and they also do not collect the debris in a convenient bag for you as a lawn sweeper does.

Leaf blowers are also loud and can be offensive to neighbors while a lawn sweeper operates relatively quietly. Push-along sweepers, in particular, are very quiet and inoffensive. They also do not require any fuel to operate, making them eco-friendly with a zero carbon footprint during use.

Things to consider when looking for a lawn sweeper

Manually push or tow-behind

There are two main types of lawn sweepers: those that are manually pushed along and those that can be fixed to the back of a lawn tractor and pulled along.

While push-along sweepers need to be lightweight to allow them to be pushed with relative ease, they must also be sturdy and constructed of high-quality materials to ensure a reasonable lifespan.

Tow-behind sweeper attachments tend to take more of a beating during use and so need to be strong and solidly built so that they can handle many years of use.

Size of your lawn

The size of your lawn will likely dictate the type of lawn sweeper you require. Push-along lawn sweepers are generally good for lawns of up to 2,000 square feet whereas larger lots will likely benefit from a tow-behind lawn tractor attachment.

Geography and location of your lawn

The geography of your lawn will also affect which lawn sweeper you should buy as some sweepers fare much better on sloping land or rough terrain than others.

Hopper bag size

When looking for a good lawn sweeper, you should consider the size of the hopper bag that comes with it. For push-along sweepers, a hopper bag that is too small will need emptying frequently and can become very inconvenient if you have to pause every two minutes to empty your bag. Equally, a hopper bag that is too big can become very heavy when full of lawn cuttings and can make operating the sweeper a much more difficult task.

When it comes to tow-behind sweepers, the bigger, the better is generally the rule for hopper bags, particularly if you have a large lawn to sweep.

Where will you store your lawn sweeper

Other elements to consider are where you will store your lawn sweeper and if it needs to fold down flat or be light enough to hang from a hook. Your lawn sweeper will spend most of its life being stored in your garage or shed, so it’s important that it won’t be cumbersome to store and get in your way.

Manufacturer reputation

You should do some research about your manufacturer – How the users rate their products, whether the product has a warranty or guarantee, and if it is well-built and solid enough to stand the test of time. Don’t worry about this as we shortlisted the most popular and trusted manufacturers and products in the article.

How to Use a Lawn Sweeper

Push-along lawn sweepers are operated by simply pushing the equipment straight ahead as you would a mower. Using a crosshatch pattern on your lawn will ensure optimum collection of debris. Empty your hopper bag every time it is almost full to minimize the risk of overflow.

Tow-behind sweepers are simply attached to the back of your lawn tractor. Again, a crosshatch pattern will be most effective in removing the most debris from your lawn.

The most important tip for success in lawn sweeping is finding the right height setting for the clippings on your lawn. The brushes should be low enough to encounter some resistance, but high enough that they don’t mangle your lawn.

 

 

Top 4 Lawn Sweepers Review

Conclusion

The product that stands out as the best lawn sweeper is the Brinly STS-427LXH Tow Behind Lawn Sweeper. Users found it to be incredibly efficient and effective at the job it was intended to do. It’s also sturdy and solidly built.

The only downside that users of this product found was the inadequate assembly instructions. However, once assembly is achieved, this isn’t something that will impact the user again.

If you need a push-along lawn sweeper, our choice would be the Agri-Fab 45-0218. It’s wider enough to collect lots of debris and is built with heavier duty materials without being too heavy to use or hang.