The Secret to a Beautiful Lawn
The most important secret to a beautiful lawn, next to our premium fertilizers, is proper cultural practices, and knowing how to water and mow your lawn properly. Mow your lawn every 5-7 days. You should never cut more than 1/3 of the grass blade off at any time to avoid shocking the grass plant. Keep your lawn around 2.5”-3” long.
Keep your mower blade sharp and mow only when the grass is dry in order to avoid ripping grass blades, slipping and falling, and clumping of grass. Keep grass longer during the heat of summer to protect the roots and retain moisture (minimum 3 inches).
Uneven areas
Try raising the deck on your mower when you hit uneven areas on your lawn, if you end up scalping high spots, you may get brown patches in those areas. Keeping the same height on the entire lawn is important to ensure it stays green.
Mowing Pattern
We recommend that you mow your lawn in a different direction each time, this is because grass tends to grow in the direction it was mowed. So, if you want your grass to grow upright, ensure to use a different pattern. Also, mowing the lawn in the same direction every time may compact the soil into ruts, which we don’t want.
Mowing Overlap
To ensure that your lawn is mowed evenly, it is important to overlap areas that have not reached the optimal 2.5”-3” height. Keeping the same height on the entire lawn is important in keeping it green and thick. It also looks much better when there are no missed strips.
Overgrown grass
When we leave for vacation during the summer time, our grass tends to get extremely long, in fact, it can grow as long as 60cm. We don’t want to stress the plant by cutting off the entire length, so, it is best to cut about 1/3 and then wait 3-4 days and cut again until you reach its optimal height (2.5”-3”), this will ensure that your grass stays healthy.
Why it’s important not to scalp
Sometimes we get the urge to scalp our lawn, with the thought process of not having to mow for longer. The reason this is dangerous for grass is because it forces the plant to start using its food reserves, which will in time stress the grass and make it thin out as well as make it more susceptible to heat, cold, drought, diseases and pest attacks. In turn, our effort to save time on mowing, will cause us to put more time and money into recovering our grass to its healthy state.
Best time of day to mow your lawn
The time of day that you mow your lawn is a crucial factor in how your grass recovers. The reason being that if you mow during the heat, your grass will lose more water and its recovery will be much slower. It is always best to mow when it is cool outside, best time of day is between 8am-10am and second best is 4pm-6pm.
Lawns that get a lot of shade
If your lawn gets a lot of shade, it is always best to mow ½ to 1 inch higher than areas that get sunlight. This way, the grass will have more leaf area to capture sunlight when it receives it.
Avoid String Trimming
If you don’t have a String Trimmer or wish to avoid string trimming, you can roll a wheel on the edging of your lawn during mowing to create flat edging.
Grasscycling
Grasscycling means that grass clippings are left on your lawn after mowing. If you haven’t cut off too much length it is actually recommended to leave the grass clippings because they decompose quickly and release valuable nutrients back into the soil. Grass clippings are nearly 80% water, so by leaving grass clippings on your lawn you can generate up to 25% of the lawn’s annual fertilizer needs.
