5 Steps to a Great Lawn-pt 4 - MOWING!

What’s to know? Start the mower, push/drive it around til everything is cut, try not to include your fingers and toes and wait til next week, right? You know by now that answer is going to be no with a mocking eyebrow raise. When I train future pros, I like to tell them about the “pie of responsibility” when it comes to getting pro level turfs. There are three parts (yeah, I know we’re doing 5 steps here, but let‘s call these three the most important) of this pie and if ANY of the three are out of whack, the other two become meaningless. Watering, fertilizing, mowing. Yes, if mowing is out of sync with your program, it won’t matter how much of the other things you do, you’re still going to be fighting the lawn, a major no no for pros where labor counts. It’s not that difficult to grasp the basic concepts of doing it the right way and what the reasons are for it, so follow along, you might actually learn something you can use!

Height. This has got to be the number one mistake made on a wide scale basis everywhere, not just in Utah. Your turf plants consist of a couple of critical parts above ground and how high or low you cut, depending on the turf type, can make a huge difference in the health, color, density, water holding capabilities and weed suppression in your turf. Leaf and crown. You almost certainly know what the leaf blade looks like, the flat, green part of your grass, but pull out a piece of grass and look closely. You’ll see the rolled yellowish or whitish area of the plant that serves as the structural support of the plant (the crown), the trunk if you’d like to think of it that way. Without it, your plant would just flop over and lay on the ground, not salute you at attention each morning. The problems with crowns is that each type of turf has a length in relation to the blade that provides an optimal balance. Cut too short for your turf type, and you get down to the crown. If you actually cut the crown, you may kill that leaf blade. This is known as scalping. An ugly word with an ugly meaning and it should be your highest priority to avoid. So what happens when you go the other way, very long grass, either through too long of frequency between mowings (we’ll get to that), over fertilization or watering , or taking your deck up too high? Well, as maybe you’ve seen on your own lawn, the long leaf does not have enough structure to it and once it grows beyond the crowns ability to hold it up, it falls over. Oddly enough, high deck mowing is rarely the culprit for this and in fact, regular mowing at a tall height can actually encourage the crown to grow taller and support a deeper turf stand. So yes, your plant can adopt to taller heights of cutting, so how about shorter? The short answer is there are minimums and you cannot fall below them and expect to keep turf with any performance. The closer you get to these minimums, the more work you will need to do to maintain the balance, making you a slave to the lawn. So where is the balance? For bluegrass/fescue stands 2.5 inches become the minimum with most turfs doing better an inch to even two inches higher, depending on the variety of turf and it’s density. I often advise clients to mow finger deep or the second to highest setting on their mower until the first frost, then begin to work the height down in half inch increments each week to prepare it for a snow load/dormancy. If you want a putting green, plant a putting green. In this state, that means bentgrass, not blue/fescue and be prepared to turn in your lawn mower for a reel style greens mower, an expensive and labor intensive turf if there ever was one born. But it will take that half inch high cut height you are after, so commit to doing it properly and show your dedication or stop being an idiot cutting your bluegrass lawn down to the crowns.

Frequency. 1/3 of the leaf blade should be cut off each time it is mowed. Would I measure that each time I was preparing to mow? Hell no. But I would try to avoid letting it get 6-8 inches deep before cuttings. Unless it’s been raining nonstop, I’ve been controlling my water and fertilizer, that means weekly mowings to stay in the window for healthy cutting. This also allows for the super beneficial use of true mulching mowers on our vertical growing turfs. If the turf is too long, these mowers will not be able to handle the grass load and finely chop it. Mowing frequency also determines how much lateral spread your turf will have to maximize available sunlight. By keeping the grass at a fairly constant height, the turf will send up new blades to take advantage of extra sunlight, resulting in denser turf stands. If the grass is growing like a bat out of hell and it hasn’t been raining nonstop, forcing you to mow every couple of days to stay close to the 1/3 rule, you are doing something else out of balance and should see the sections of fertilizing and watering. If mowing is a Zen issue for you, mow to your hearts content and let those of you who are not finding inner peace through mowing, follow these rules and avoid spending excess time dealing with your mowing chore. One word here, if you are the sort that believes that you won’t need to mow it as often if you just cut it real short and wait for it to grow back in, you need to consider hiring it out or else it’s time for you to break out the roundup, kill that pig and choose landscaping more appropriate to your lifestyle. There are some nice rockscapes out there that you can check out.

Blade Sharpness. Frayed grass is like split ends on your hair. The only solution is a clean cut back to where it’s whole again. The only way to get that clean cut back to whole is with a sharp blade. Yes, a dull, round blade will cut grass in the same way a bullet will cut through it’s target. Speed and impact. Not exactly the cleanest way of doing things. The good news is, it’s not difficult to get a nice sharp edge on a blade. You can tell if the blade IS getting dull by examining a few grass blades and looking at the tips, dull blades will leave a frayed tip that turns light brown, often making people think that drought stress is setting in with an overall brownish hue to the turf. A sharp blade will rectify this, leading to quicker healing of the cuts and a greener overall appearance. It also takes less power to cut with a sharp blade, thereby enabling faster cut speeds with the available horsepower your machine has. Less fuel, faster cuts, better color, less damage to the plant, the benefits are obvious. How often will you need to sharpen? Well, that depends on how much you mow, if the grass is wet (wet grass dulls blades quicker) type of blade (mulchers impact turf more often than straight blades) and even the grinding pitch of the blade itself. Typically, a homeowner with a small sized lot will need to go once to twice per season. A pro may need to do their machines weekly.

Pattern. It’s not just for ball fields and golf courses. I’m sure you’ve seen striping patterns of just about every sort on grass now, from those done with rollers or flaps, to just wheel tracks made form various machines by pros or anal neighbors. The good news is, patterns are cosmetic and the one that you choose is really irrelevant to your lawns health. What IS important, however, is that you rotate your pattern in opposite directions and across if you have the space to do so. This allows grass to get pulled in a variety of directions to keep it more upright after a heavy mower, foot traffic or even watering has bent it over in a particular direction. This also allows you to catch high or low spots from varying directions to keep a uniform height going. The second importance to varying your cut pattern is to minimize soil compaction and turf wear in the areas where your tires travel. We don’t want wheel tracks/ruts to become a permanent fixture in your lawn.

Mulching/Bagging/Side Discharging. So what to do with that cut grass? Let’s start with mulching. This is not to be confused with shooting the grass out the side of your deck. That is for farmers and field mowers and is known as side discharging. If you are not a redneck hillbilly, you still have all your teeth and your car is not up on blocks in front of your trailer, this is not an acceptable method of mowing fine turfs. Mulching mowers use baffles and specially curved blades to create a high lift wind tunnel beneath your mower. It cuts off the blade, lifts it and hits it over and over and over again, turning it into finely chopped bits before it falls back to the turf. The benefit of this is obvious, you don’t have to deal with any cut grass, but also it returns water and nutrients back to the turf without creating any sort of thatch issue. The pieces are so small and mainly comprised of water, that within 1 to 2 days, these particles are nearly fully broken down and enriching the existing turf. Using the mulch method can save you 40-50% of your labor each time you cut as well as extend fertilization benefits as much as an additional 3-4 weeks! Reduced water also becomes a benefit and turfs that are mulched tend to be thicker and healthier than nonmulched turf. The downside is that mulchers tend to cost more money and require more power to operate as they pummel the cut grass into tiny bits. The blades are also more difficult to sharpen due to their curves. Bagging also has it’s place in a few situations. When picking up leaves in the fall or when turf gets extremely long after constant rainfall are good candidates for bagging. Some people also feel that it leaves a cleaner lawn than mulching, but I would say that more than one pro hangs a bag on the side or back of their mulching mower to avoid even having a conversation about it, but never pick up anything and there is no noticeable difference to the client in the way of clean or messy. Side discharging? I can’t think of a single instance where I’d choose nor recommend it on regularly maintained turf. For areas a foot or more in height it may be the choice, but it leaves one of the dirtiest cuts around and has the added danger of launching items in the turf out at high speed. I’ve seen some “pros” using this method and calling it mulching. Generally, I’ll see someone else doing their job the next season as their lack of any skill whatsoever catches up to them.

So you see, mowing DOES play a simplistic but significant role in how your lawn fares. Whether it’s fraying a tip and making you think the lawn is dry, scalping the lawn and allowing it to dry out rapidly or have weed out compete it, leaving it too long and having it droop over or wearing ruts into the lawn. Just a few minor corrections can be made to your habits to give you that piece of the puzzle to fit in your other efforts, resulting in better, thicker, healthier lawns.