A healthy lawn on your campus or workplace requires more than just planting grass. Like every culture in our garden, a lawn also requires regular maintenance.
Weeding, watering, spraying, and trimming are just a few traditional maintenance methods that will keep your lawn green, clean, and healthy. However, they can make your lawn unattractive and even unhealthy if not done correctly.
Mowing your lawn too often can have a negative impact on your grass. Regular trimming is recommended, but you should do it sparingly.
Setting your mower too low will leave some of the soil fallow and result in soil nutrients and moisture loss. The prevailing climatic conditions also determine how often you should mow your lawn.
In rainy weather, you can mow your lawn weekly as the grass grows faster, but in dry weather, you should do it every two weeks or monthly.
There’s a lot more to do to keep your lawn healthy and attractive. This post outlines daily, weekly, and monthly practices to keep your lawn greener, cleaner, and more attractive.
How Often Should You Cut Your Lawn?
Consider the following factors to determine how often you should mow your lawn.
- Prevailing weather conditions and seasons.
- Your desired height and thickness.
- The speed and stage of development.
Grass proliferates in warm and humid conditions. During this season, you can trim your lawn weekly or every 10 days.
When dry weather sets in, consider reducing the mowing frequency to allow the grass to retain nutrients and moisture in the soil.
How tall you want your lawn to grow is another factor to consider, but as a rule of thumb, you should always cut about a third of the height of the grass blades.
The remaining stem should be at least three inches tall.
In the early stages of growth, grasses proliferate and contain high levels of auxin. You can trim your grass more frequently at this stage, but be careful not to disturb the roots and leaves.
As auxin concentration decreases over time and the growth rate decreases, less frequent pruning is required.
Is it Okay to Cut Grass Every Day?
Frequent mowing improves its thickness because it depletes auxin and causes gibberellins to dominate. Gibberellin hormones are responsible for horizontal growth and increase the thickness of the turf.
However, you have to keep in mind that mowing every day has a negative effect on your health. The blade cuts through wounds that take time to heal; if you do this daily, the grass doesn’t have time to heal.
In addition, daily mowing leaves the soil bare, which encourages soil erosion and subsequently leads to a loss of fertiliser and moisture from the soil. The lack of nutrients and moisture causes the grass to turn yellow and unhealthy.
Regular watering and fertilising are essential to counteract the effects of water and nutrient loss. However, it requires money, time and work.
It is best not to mow the lawn daily to reduce the stress of watering the lawn after mowing and adding nitrogenous fertilisers.
Does frequent mowing make the grass thick?
Yes, frequent mowing makes the grass thick and green. But ploughing has to be done right. The minimum height of the grass after mowing should be about three and a half inches. Also, set your mower to a third of the blade when mowing.
Other factors favour lawn thickening, such as weeding and fertilising the lawn. Be aware that cutting the lawn more often will encourage thatch accumulation.
Straw is the dead material of plants and includes roots, young stems, dry leaves and crowns.
Thatch accumulation is detrimental to grass growth and impairs root and leaf function. In addition, frequent mowing impairs root development and gives the grass a wilted appearance due to transpiration and lack of solid root anchoring.
The next time you mow your lawn, make sure you leave enough leaves to keep the lawn healthy and thriving.
How Many Times Do You Mow Your Lawn in a Year?
There is no set frequency of how many times a year you should mow your lawn. The number of bites you take depends on a few factors, such as:
- Grass type. Some grass breeds, such as B. perennial ryegrass, grow faster than others and must be mowed more often.
- Popular seasons. A warm season with high humidity favours the growth of the grass. From early spring to early winter, growth rates are at their peak as the sun’s heat fuels the grass for food production. At this point, you can trim your lawn weekly. The grass is dormant at the beginning of winter, and the growth rate slows. In autumn, the mowing frequency is reduced until the beginning of autumn.
- Preferred grass height. We have different preferences for the height of the grass on our lawns. Someone who likes short grass will mow their lawn more often than someone who likes longer grass.
Given the factors above, there is no standard number of times you must mow your lawn in a year.
However, the typical frequency ranges from once a week to once a month. This equates to a range of 12-50 mowings in a year.
Why You Shouldn’t Mow Your Lawn Every Week
The main reason for mowing a lawn is to keep it clean and to maintain the desired grass height. Mowing also improves the thickness of the grass and keeps it green.
However, you should note that too much trimming has some adverse effects on the lawn, such as:
- Bleaching of grass. Mowing your lawn too often will strip the grass of its leaves and leave more wounds that may take time to heal. The loss of leaves impairs photosynthesis and makes the grass unhealthy.
- Growth of weeds. Too much mowing exposes bare ground and encourages weeds to germinate. This increases nutrient competition between grasses and weeds, making them unhealthy.
- Nutrient deficiency in the topsoil. Frequent mowing exposes the top layer of soil to soil-erosive agents such as wind and water. This leads to a loss of nutrients and minerals in the topsoil, depriving the grass of minerals and other nutrients from fertilisers.
- High evaporation rate. The tall grass provides a protective cover to the soil and acts as a mulch that retains soil moisture. Mowing your lawn weekly exposes the soil to the sun’s heat, which increases moisture loss through evaporation.
The often broken glass blades are sharp and uncomfortable to walk on barefoot. Sometimes we like to walk barefoot on the lawn, but the blades of grass cut repeatedly can sting and injure your feet.
final thoughts
As you can see, mowing your lawn too often is not only possible, but it can also cause many problems. I hope this article has helped you take better care of your lawn!