Many homeowners don’t recognize the extent to which mowing the lawn can impact their overall lawn care results. While most homeowners are quite familiar with the way in which fertilization and other lawn care treatments can impact the thickness and color of their lawn, most do not think about the way in which mowing makes a difference.
But if you truly want thick, green, and healthy grass, then you need to pay attention to how to mow your lawn.
To help set you up for optimal success, here are some of our best tips on how to mow a lawn.
One of the first aspects to address is the mowing height. We find that a lot of homeowners assume this is all “personal preference.” While it’s true that some homeowners like their lawn cut shorter than others, there are mowing height recommendations that need to be followed based upon what type of grass you have.
Here’s the general breakdown.
Along with the overall mow height, you should also be careful not to cut too much of the grass at once. This comes down to mowing the lawn weekly.
It’s important that you are cutting no more than one-third of the grass blade at a time. Anything more than this puts too much stress on the plant and can be the reason why your lawn may be yellowing.
While it’s easy for homeowners to skip a weekend of mowing the lawn, maybe because the weather got bad or they got busy, this can ultimately be detrimental to the overall health of their grass.
Another aspect of how to mow a lawn that often gets overlooked is the state of the mower itself—specifically, the mowing blade. When you cut the lawn with a dull blade, you put a tremendous amount of unnecessary stress on the grass. That’s because instead of a nice and clean cut, you’re making a jagged one, which is more difficult for the grass to recover from.
Although it’s not often thought about in these terms, a lawn is made up of a bunch of individual grass plants. Any time you are making a cut on a plant (including when pruning smaller plants or even trees), you are putting that plant under a certain amount of stress. Recover from a clean cut makes it much easier for the lawn to heal and won’t cause it to turn yellow.
At Grassperson, we are sharpening mowing blades at least twice a week, if not more. But we find that not all lawn care companies follow through on regular sharpening and many homeowners don’t, either. In fact, it’s not uncommon for us to hear from homeowners who say they’ve never had their mower blades sharpened in the entire time they’ve owned the equipment.
Timing is also important when considering how to mow your lawn. We’ve already mentioned the importance of mowing weekly. In fact, at Grassperson, we do not offer bi-weekly mowing as it’s only going to set you up for trouble.
In terms of weather, we generally advise against mowing immediately following significant rainfall as it’s going to end up leaving ruts in your yard which can be difficult to repair. However, we do recommend that you water your lawn the day after mowing in order to help it through its recovery from the cut.
The idea is to put your lawn against the least amount of stress possible, and watering makes a big difference.
As far as seasonality, while our primary mowing season typically wraps up at the end of October, we know that some of our clients’ lawns are still seeing some growth after that. Mowing here or there in the “off-season” can help the lawn to continue looking great.
We get a lot of questions about what to do with grass clippings after mowing the lawn. We understand that homeowners like the idea of bagging the clippings and getting rid of them, but our strong recommendation would be to allow those clippings to remain as a natural fertilizer.
When you bag clippings, you’re taking away that natural fertilization and will then need to add soil amendments to add it back in. Not to mention you have to go out and continuously buy bags, fill them, and have them hauled to a landfill. But simply leaving the clippings be is a great organic practice that’s best for the health of your lawn.
Of course, we do understand that many homeowners have a strong personal preference that clippings are too messy. We do offer a bagging service as an additional cost to our lawn mowing services.
We understand that the nuances involved in how to mow your lawn might be more than you bargained for. In fact, perhaps you’d rather just leave it in the hands of a pro so that you don’t have to worry about it at all.
At Grassperson, we can incorporate lawn mowing into our Total Maintenance Package so that we can eliminate all of the worries associated with keeping your lawn in optimal shape.
By allowing us to take over your lawn mowing, you eliminate your hassles and headaches and gain peace of mind that all of the best practices are being used. As a result, you can feel confident that you’re going to get the best results, too. All of this will boil down to helping you achieve the best lawn on the block.
Ready to get a great-looking lawn at your Flower Mound, Highland Village, or Lewisville, TX home? Get a free quote and get ready to enjoy the best lawn on the block with no hassles associated with it!