How Often Should You Mow Your Lawn?

Maintaining a healthy, great-looking lawn can be quite challenging especially when you’re unfamiliar with lawn care. So how often should you mow your lawn?. In this article, we will discuss the recommended way and time to cut your lawn and how to care for it.

How Often to Mow Lawn

Regular mowing keeps your yard looking beautiful, healthy, and vibrant. The exact frequency of mowing will depend a lot on several factors including season, climatic conditions, the type of grass, the type of soil. Generally speaking, during the warmer spring and summer months you should mow your lawn weekly.

When to Cut Grass

The recommended best timing for cutting your grass is during its growing season. If you have warm-season grass, you can mow it during summer. While cool-season grass can be mowed in the springtime or during the early fall. In general, grass grows slower during cold months. You may not need to cut it during wintertime or late autumn.

Best Time to Cut Grass

The best time to cut grass is when it is completely dry. You should not cut grass when it is wet. If your grass is wet or dewy mowing will be labor-intensive and time-consuming. More importantly, the cutting will be uneven. Try to match up the schedule of your lawn maintenance with the forecasted weather conditions.

You should also avoid cutting grass during the heat of the day since cutting during high temperatures can cause turf stress. Where possible try to mow your lawn in either the mid-morning (8 am-10 am) or late afternoon (4 pm-6 pm).

Best Time of Day to Mow Lawn

The absolute best time to cut grass is in the mid-morning between 8 am and 10 am. After any dew from the previous night has dried up and before the heat of the day sets in. That way your lawn will have time enough to fully recover before nightfall.

Mowing Lawn at Night

Is it good or bad to Mow your lawn at night?

Mowing your lawn at night is generally not a good idea and should be avoided if possible. This is because your lawn needs time to adequately recover before the onset of nightfall, which is when your lawn is most susceptible to damage caused by fungus and other turf diseases.

Lawn Mowing Etiquette

Another reason mowing your lawn in the mid-morning is the best time of day to mow is because the noise (especially a 2 stroke) from your lawn mower won’t wake your neighbors up from their well-deserved weekend sleep in. If you have a robot mower this isn’t an issue because a robot mower is so quiet that it doesn’t matter when it’s out working as no-one will hear it. Robot mowers can be scheduled to cut when you think is best depending on the conditions and your neighbors.

First Cut of Your New Lawn

The first cut of your new lawn depends on how fast your type of grass grows and your desired height for your lawn.

For a newly seeded lawn, it is important to wait until it is established before mowing. Allow for the grass to grow to at least 5 to 6 cm which will take about six to eight weeks or two months. Always remember to set your mower’s cutting height to reduce your new grass down to a third of its height which can be about 3 to 4 cm.

While for newly laid turf, you may only wait for about 2 to 3 weeks to mow it for the first time. Test the turf first to ensure that it has established well into the soil. Try to lift the turf, if it can be lifted easily, wait for a few more days. But if you were able to get a handful of grass clippings, it means that it is okay to bring out the mower.

After the lawn is established, during the growing season, lawn mowing can be done once a week on average. This is enough to keep the grass healthy.

How Often to Mow Your Lawn in Summer?

Due to summer’s warmer weather, your grass could grow at a faster rate compared to colder months or even during the springtime. This means that lawn mowing should be done more often. On average, grass grows about 1 inch during summer every three to five days. If you’re mowing just less than 3 inches, you can cut your lawn every 4 days so that the grass will remain around the ideal length.

Maintaining your lawn can require a lot of time and effort. You cut it yourself with a classic self-propelled lawn mower, or you could hire a garden landscaper to do it for you, however the cost to hire someone to do it for you will add up significantly over time.

Another suitable alternative is to purchase a robot mower. The purchase cost of the mower would eventually outweigh the cost of hiring a contractor.

How Often Should You Mow Your Lawn in Winter?

Unlike in the summer, grass grows slowly even in the regions where you don’t have snowfall. When the temperature goes down below 40°F / 4°C, you may not need to maintain your lawn as frequently. Sometimes in the cooler months, there’s no need to do any lawn maintenance. In warmer regions mowing can be conducted every 3-4 weeks.