The Festive Season grows closer by the day, and everywhere people will be getting ready to receive visitors and go visiting, and one of the first things you notice when you arrive at your destination is the lawn.
If you have a lawn, you’ll want it always to look good – no matter what time of the year. If you keep to a maintenance program with your property, it will never seem like hard work. If you leave it until the warm weather arrives, then the work is heavy and invariably too late for the coming season.
The Reason to Mow
When you mow your lawn, it stimulates growth. That’s because mowing pulls at the grass and lets the oxygen, which is one of the essential things the grass needs to grow.
By mowing the lawn, you are clipping off the grass’s tips, which encourages your lawn to grow thicker with a better root system. It eliminates the weeds in general. Yet, even with this simple function – things can go wrong.
Is There a Right Time of the Month to Mow?
Some people mow when they feel their lawn is looking too long; others have a set maintenance program that works for them. Ideally, as the seasons change, so do the lawn’s needs, and it will usually tell you when it’s time to mow.
If you’ve recently fertilized, you’ll find your lawn needs to be mowed more often as the fertilizer will send it into a growth spurt.
Check the weather. If there’s been no rain for longer than usual, but you still want to mow for a tidy up, then adjust the lawnmower settings to the highest of the mowing heights to make things look a bit smarter without taking off too much grass.
Typically, however, you can mow about once per week during the growing season.
Past Fall, you can start to slow down on the mowing and eventually stop for a while during the dormant season.
Right Height for Lawn Grass
The Experts tell us never to remove more than one-third of the height of your grass at any one cutting.
They tell us that even if you’ve been away with no-one to take care of your lawn and the grass has grown relatively high, they insist on never cutting it all off at one mowing but to take it off gradually by one-third of the height each time until you eventually arrive at the right height.
Apparently, to cut your grass down in stages lessens the amount of stress it would undergo if you took off the whole amount in one cutting.
By the way, this seems to be such a hard and fast rule that these same Experts advise us not to guess the height but to measure it to select the correct setting on the lawnmower each time.
Is There a Best Time of the Day to Mow?
Yes, there is. Once again, the Experts say mid-morning is always best. However, if that doesn’t suit you, then 16h00 is also good.
These times of day are selected because early in the morning, the grass still bears the dew and makes your lawnmower work harder. Mid-day is just too hot, and the evening is a non-starter because they say that mowing is stressful to your lawn and needs time to recover.
A last note on these suggested mowing times. You probably have neighbors, and those times above are probably the least invasive of their privacy. You wouldn’t like it very much if your neighbors started being noisy early in the morning or late at night. Therefore, these times are suitable for the lawn, but they also happen to be good for the neighborhood.
Sharpening The Blades of the Lawnmower
Obviously, how often you have the blades sharpened will depend on how much wear and tear they undergo. A lot depends on the size of your lawn and how often you mow it.
However, cutting with blunt blades can damage your lawn as the grass will be pulled slightly instead of sharply cut.
Make sure you check your blades reasonably often and have them sharpened when necessary.
Getting the Mowing Done
It’s a good idea to first mow around any garden features you have and then mow on the flat parts. If you mow the whole lawn first and then have to mow around any feature, you’ll need to go back and redo a good deal of the law to make it look better.
If you have a sizeable lawn, it will look better if you mow one line vertically and intersperse that with a horizontal line. It then ends up looking somewhat like a checkers board.
What to do with Grass Clippings
There’s a lot of talk about the benefit of leaving the freshly cut cuttings on the lawn to dry out and blow away, but that’s not the answer. Collect all these grass clippings and mulch them. Why not just chop them finely and mix them with everything else in your compost mix? Later, turn it back onto the lawn again, which will stop weeds from springing up and maintaining your lawn in good condition.
Keep Up the Maintenance
When a lawn is maintained on a regular basis, then it ends up being easier to keep looking nice than when it’s been neglected, and you suddenly have to get started. Further, because it’s been left so long, it will take longer to get established into a decent condition.
So do your lawn and yourself a favor and get started today. If you already have a plan, you’ll be able to fine-tune it and know the reason why.
Why do we have gardens and lawns if not for ourselves to enjoy? We should be able to sit outside and enjoy the fruits of our own (or a garden service’s) labors just as much as we enjoy the inside of our homes.
Now when you drive up to your house, you should be able to feel proud of that first sight of your home – which is the garden and your resplendent lawn.
Patricia Godwin
