Mowing your lawn regularly is part of its maintenance, and it also has other benefits aside from keeping your yard clean. It can help in reducing the occurrence of weeds, and it can also add compost to your lawn, which can make the grass more tolerant from stress. However, before you get your lawn mower and rush to your yard, you first need to learn the appropriate way to do it.
There are some people who believe that mowing the lawn more often can damage it. Well, the beauty of well-trimmed lawns depends in how well you mow the grass, and not how often. This means that mowing the lawn at the right time, and as well as maintaining the grass at an appropriate height are the factors that will keep your lawn healthy, clean, and attractive.
If you are worrying that you might be damaging your lawn if you’ve been cutting the grass at the wrong time, then you’ve come to the right place. Today, we are going to give you the different factors that will tell you if mowing your lawn more often damage it.
How a Lawn is Damaged
It actually does not matter so much on how often you mow your lawn. What matters more is how long the grass is when you mow it. If you notice your lawn to be yellow and dried out after mowing, then maybe the blade on your mower is set too low.
There are people who like to cut their lawn super-short. However, this needs a specific variety of grass and a lot of extra care when it comes to fertilizing and other maintenance. If you are not one of the people who spend time fertilizing and maintaining the grass on their lawn, then it will be best if you let the grass grow a little longer.
Also, mowing thelawn so that the blades are less than an inch tall can cause the grass to grow a shallow root system. This can be a problem, especially in the summer, because the heat can stress the lawn since shallow roots depend only on surface water. Aside from that, exceptionally short grass also enables sunlight to overheat and dry out the soil easily compared to taller grass.
Keep in mind that short grass can have a problem in making food for itself to compete, and the extra nutrients, water, and sunlight hitting the soil can also encourage the development of weed.
How to Mow for Healthy Grass
If you want to keep your lawn healthy, then you need to mow no more than 1/3 of the grass’s height at a time. It means that there are kinds of grasses that you need to keep at a 2-inch height, and they need to grow to 3 inches before you mow off the top inch. You just need to return them to their original 2-inch height. Also, when you mow your lawn, the grass tends to lean in the direction you mowed. Therefore, to keep your lawn looking beautiful, try to mow in different directions each time to prevent it from leaning on one side only.
One of the factors you also need to consider is the kind of grass you have. There are basically two kinds of grass, irrespective of the various species. One type grows in the warm season, and the other type grows in the cool season.
During springtime, it is best to go for the kind that thrives in the cool season. This will help you get the best results and keep the grass healthy after mowing it. During the summer, you need to mow the grass, which strives in the warm season. It means that during the growing season of the grass, you need to mow your lawn more frequently.
How to Encourage Grass Recovery
If you’ve mowed your lawn too short, do not fret because you can still make your yard look beautiful again. One of the things you can do to encourage grass recovery is by watering them deeply and occasionally whenever rainfall is not enough. You also need to adjust the mowing height to the recommended level, depending on what type of grass you have. This is crucial in preventing further injury to your lawn.
If you see sheared, yellow grass in your yard, you might want to try applying a chelated iron supplement. Just make sure to use it according to manufacturer recommendations. However, if the grass dies or if they fail to perk up, then overseeding the area with new grass seeds might help you solve the problem.
Practices You Need to Avoid to Keep Your Lawn Healthy
If you want to keep your lawn looking healthy and gorgeous, there are practices that you need to avoid doing. One is applying nitrogen fertilizer or a balanced fertilizer that contains nitrogen to an area of your lawn that is scalped or too short. It’s because this can weaken the grass, or worse, burn vulnerable grass. If you are trying to recover grass, you need to postpone any routine fertilizer application until your lawn recovers.
Aside from applying fertilizers, you also need to avoid over-watering your lawn. It’s because too frequent irrigation can make the grass susceptible to disease. Also, if the grass grows very long, or if you forgot to mow your lawn for quite some time, the grass should not be reduced to its recommended height with only one mowing.
What you can do instead is to raise the mowing height, then gradually reduce the height over several cuttings. This can help in preventing your lawn from scalping. Choosing a mower with multiple cutting heights such as those discussed by Garden DIY ensures you can mow at different heights depending on the season.
often does not really damage it. In fact, regular mowing can make it look clean and healthy. You just need to keep in mind the rules when it comes to the height of the grass when you mow.