One of the most daunting chores that many property owners just can’t find time to do is mow the lawn. It’s tiring, the heat of the sunburns and the time it consumes just doesn’t seem worth the fuss. But leaving your lawn uncut and growing wildly has more problems it can impose on you.
A regular lawn care routine that includes mowing keeps the grass at an appropriate height to allow for proper growth. While some ornamental grasses are meant to grow tall, turf grass varieties need regular mowing for a healthy, strong root system.
Here’s what happens when you don’t mow your lawn?
Unsightly Lawn
Tall turf grass is typically considered unattractive in lawns. The tall grass becomes thin with some blades growing much taller than others for an inconsistent appearance. After long periods without mowing, the grass may go to seed. This causes the blades to look more like weeds than grass. In addition to decreased curb appeal, excessively tall grass puts the homeowner at risk for complaints. Many cities require homeowners to keep the lawn mowed.
Breeding ground for parasites and insects
Untamed grass becomes the perfect breeding ground for insects like ant and termite colonies, pools of bugs and worms crawling around, and parasites that can easily move into your home. Tall grass offers more coverage from the sun and predators like cats and hawks making it a great habitat for small organisms.
Mowing your lawn isn’t just about keeping it looking pristine but also prevents any unwanted nature to start infesting your property.
Mowing Difficulties
The stress of mowing is minimized when only one-third of the grass height is removed. When you wait too long between mowing, it becomes more difficult to stay within the recommended guidelines. For the least amount of stress, setting the mower higher and gradually reducing the height is the best option. The mower may have difficulty cutting down the tall grass even with an increased blade height. A sharp blade is essential and moving slowly also helps the mower work efficiently to cut down the tall grass.
Excessive Grass Clippings
When you do mow your tall grass, the clippings left behind are longer and more difficult to manage. With regular mowing, the short clippings easily fall to the ground where they decompose and add nutrients to the soil. Longer grass clippings tend to sit on top of the lawn in unattractive clumps. Those clippings also block sunlight to the turf grass, affecting its growth. Mowing the lawn frequently reduces the clumped piles of grass clippings.
If you wait until the grass is long to mow your lawn, the extra long grass clippings will clump up over the turf, blocking the sunlight and stunting growth. If left without raking, the clumped clippings could actually kill the grass.
Growth of unwanted plants
Aside from your turf growing in unwanted proportions, you’re also allowing the cultivation of weeds. Cutting your turf short prevents weeds from growing. It also prevents other harmful plants from ever taking root on your lawn.
Unhealthy Grass
A lawn that isn’t mowed regularly to the recommended height is often less healthy than a manicured lawn. If you cut more than one-third of the blade length to correct overgrown grass, your lawn may stop growing or need additional irrigation to recover. Root growth slows, causing the grass to weaken. A lawn full of weak grass is more susceptible to disease, pests and weeds. Regular mowing to keep the grass between 2 and 3 inches during the growing season keeps the lawn vigorous and better able to resist damage.
Due to a high growth rate and lack of nutrients, not all areas of your turf will get the right feed. Because of this, you’ll notice that grass will grow at different heights. This will also cause brown patches to appear and possibly create dormant areas in your lawn.
The longer the blades of grass become, the more resources it becomes used to consuming. If you suddenly cut the grass by a few inches all at once, it’s going to be shocked as it suddenly needs fewer resources. This can sometimes kill your grass if it is unable to recover. Sometimes it needs additional irrigation to recover fully.
It is important that you continue to mow your lawn if you want it to remain healthy. Here’s why:
When you invest your money and time into your lawn and landscape, it’s important to do everything you can to keep that investment well-maintained. Mowing your lawn and trimming your landscape is part of keeping it maintained and offers several benefits.
Routine mowing and trimming keep your lawn and landscape looking nice, keeps it healthy, and helps save you time and money by preventing issues later on.
Mowing your lawn takes a lot of time, love and care. As a homeowner, it’s a big responsibility to make sure your yard is clean and tidy. But sometimes, you might want to skip a mowing in order to save time. Unfortunately, it’s not always in the best interest of your lawn to wait longer between mowes. Keeping your lawn mowed is beneficial. In this article, we’ll discuss the many reasons why you should mow your lawn regularly.
Aesthetics
A beautiful landscape and lawn adds curb appeal and increases your home’s property, but only if it’s healthy and well-maintained. Regular maintenance such as trimming and mowing keeps your lawn and landscape looking nice and healthy. Even if you don’t have any plans to sell your home, your lawn and landscape (particularly your front yard) is the first thing visitors notice. A home with a messy, unkempt lawn or landscape detracts from your home’s curb appeal and value. Routine trimming keeps your plants at a manageable size and provides beautiful accenting without detracting from your home’s appeal.
A mowed lawn keeps your yard level and prevents overgrown grass and weeds from taking over the rest of your landscape and creating an unattractive mess.
Not only that, having a nice looking yard goes a long way for your personal confidence as well as maintaining good rapport with your neighbors.
Routine Mowing & Trimming Keeps Your Lawn & Landscape Healthy
Did you know mowing stimulates your grass to grow lush and green? In the same way that you would prune a plant for better productivity, your grass follows the same basic principle.
When you neglect your lawn or landscape, its health suffers. Grass grows astoundingly fast, and waiting too long between lawn cuttings causes stress to your lawn because you’re cutting off more than one-third of the total blade height at one time. When you don’t trim your lawn, your grass goes into shock, making it weak and less resilient against diseases. Regular lawn mowing keeps your grass blades at the proper height for maximum health and photosynthesis and prevents the spread of lawn diseases.
Trimming your landscape plants stimulates their growth and removes dead or diseased areas, preventing it from spreading to the rest of the plant. Trimming removes dead and dying branches, promotes a natural and healthy shape, allows room for new plant growth, and deters pests from infesting your plants.
Keeping Your Lawn Mowed & Landscape Trimmed Saves You Time & Money
Regularly mowing and trimming your lawn and landscape may seem like a lot of work and can be quite time-consuming. However, when you hire a professional like Mow Now Australia, you actually save time and money with routine mowing and trimming. Our trimming and mowing services relieve you of the time and work required to keep your entire lawn and landscape maintained.
Trimming and mowing your lawn and landscape regularly prevents damage that would cost more money and require more time in the long run to fix. Landscapes and lawns that do not receive routine mowing and trimming become susceptible to disease, starvation, pest infestation, drought, nutrient loss, and many other issues. Fixing a lawn or landscape with these issues costs much more money and time to restore than regular lawn and landscape maintenance.
Simply put, you’ll use less lawn care products if you make mowing a regular habit. In addition, it takes less time to touch up a yard than it does to refurbish it.
These are just a few of our favorite benefits of keeping your lawn mowed. Grass has so many wonderful benefits, and keeping it healthy will give you the best bang for your time and investment. If you need help maintaining your lawn, give us a call. We offer routine maintenance depending on your needs.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Do I have to mow my lawns?
When you mow and maintain your lawn, you ensure that your grass stays thick and healthy.
- Mowing is such a time consuming task
Routine mowing and trimming keep your lawn and landscape looking nice, keeps it healthy, and helps save you time and money by preventing issues later on. When you hire a professional like Mow Now Australia, you actually save time and money with routine mowing and trimming.
Conclusion
You may find it tempting to ditch mowing and watering, but you really do need to keep up-to-date with your lawn care. When you mow and maintain your lawn, you ensure that your grass stays thick and healthy. Mowing on a regular basis is crucial for reducing stress on the grass, and the grass grows deeper roots as well. Regular mowing also serves the crucial function of keeping pests away from your lawn. If you’ve ever taken an extended hiatus from mowing, you may well recall that it doesn’t take snakes and rodents long before they begin to infiltrate an unkempt lawn. There’s also the issue of weed control. Weeds prey on lawns that aren’t mowed, so unless you want a patch of dandelions, you really need to keep to a regular lawn mowing schedule.
Anyone with a family knows how kids love to play on a lawn, and this is virtually impossible with lawns that are unkempt, as the tall grass is uncomfortable and offers poor visibility. If you plan on using your lawn for any summer entertainment, it’s necessary that you mow your lawn
Additionally, did you know a well-maintained lawn acts as a natural air conditioner? A mowed lawn offsets solar heat by 50% through cooling evaporation. On a sunny day, your fresh lawn will stay 10° to 14° cooler. This in return reduces the overall cooling requirements of your house. In addition, having fresh grass can help filter out pollutants and debris from storm water providing you with a comfortable place to enjoy the fresh air. Just imagine sitting outside on a patio next to your good looking lawn and enjoying cooler temperatures coming off of your lawn.
For those of you who are concerned about the environmental effects of mowing should consider a reel mower, which uses no fuel and offers better exercise than riding mowers. Whatever you decide, however, it’s important that you keep mowing—your lawn will thank you for it.