Use These Tips Yourself or Find a Lawn Care Team To Do Your Mowing For You
Perfect stripes, sharp edges, and clean walkways: every homeowner dreams of a lawn like this, the kind that neighbors envy.
A show-stopping, expertly mowed lawn takes skill, and you don’t pick up the technique overnight. That’s why you’ll see mowing companies out in your neighborhood nearly every day in the spring, summer, and fall. Most homeowners can’t achieve their dream lawn without help.
Learn the secrets that lawn care service experts use to mow their clients’ lawns, as well as their own, so you can try to do it yourself or know the standard when hiring a professional.
Professional Lawn Care Teams Mow Taller Than You Think
One of the biggest newbie mistakes is mowing your grass too short. That might look nice, but the shorter you mow, the easier it is for the hot sun to dry out and stress your turf. A short-cropped lawn also leaves room for weeds.
Professional lawn cutting service teams keep grass at about 3 inches tall. Keeping grass tall is a strategy that shades its own roots, maintains moisture longer, and lets weeds know there’s no space for them. In a sense, tall grass does a lot of your lawn maintenance for you.
Lawn care service teams also know this secret: if you’ve let your lawn grow super tall because you’ve missed a few mows, it’s better to bring down the height over a few mowings, rather than cutting it all at once.
Lawn Mowing Teams Always Keep It Sharp
Anyone who has ever owned a lawnmower hopes they can just get by season to season without dealing with maintenance. Unfortunately, that’s not how it works. You must sharpen your lawnmower’s blade regularly.
Otherwise, you’ll end up with a lawn that looks ragged and stressed. A dull blade tears at your grass, which causes it to dry out and turn brown or even gray.
A professional lawn maintenance crew continually sharpens its mowers’ blades to ensure that crisp, fresh, neatly cut look that we all want in our yards.
Switch Up Your Lawn Mowing Direction for Improved Lawn Care
Don’t mow in the same pattern week to week. This forces the grass to lean in one direction, which can move it away from its ideal positioning for moisture and sun, while creating tracks in your grass that end up thinning out. Consider this pattern instead:
- First week: mow horizontally.
- Second week: go vertically.
- Third week: try diagonally.
When you mow like this, you’ll be able to see those outfield- or golf-course-like stripes, and your lawn will grow more evenly.
Pros Take the Day Off When Grass Is Wet
If you hire a professional lawn mowing service, you might get a text after a rainstorm that your designated mowing day has been bumped back. This is because professional crews don’t want to harm your lawn when it’s wet. Wet grass can spread lawn diseases from one spot on your lawn to another, while also creating clumps on your lawn. If a pro does have to mow, they go slower and not too low, while removing clumps from the mower along the way.
Pro Lawn Care Service Teams Mulch Their Grass
Who doesn’t love free food? When you mulch your clippings instead of bagging them, grass clippings feed your lawn when they break down. Mulching gives your lawn free fertilizer that helps keep your lawn healthy.
Bagging is important if you’re trying to collect significant leaf coverage, if it’s wet, or when weeds like dandelions are dispersing seeds; otherwise, feed your lawn to your lawn!
Pros Do Their Lawn Mowing on the Right Schedule
In spring, when grass is growing, yards likely need a good cut once a week. But when it starts to get dry during our Kansas City summers, you might want to do what the pros do: they wait two weeks or more between cuts. An experienced lawn cutting service team mows based on the lawn’s condition, not on a routine schedule, so grass doesn’t end up getting stressed by short mows and too little water.
Always Do the Edges for That Professional Lawn Care Look
You absolutely have to trim after your mow. Use a string trimmer to knock out grass around fences, trim the sidewalk and driveway, and clean up around your trees and beds. It takes less time than you think, and it makes a major difference in how your lawn looks after a mow.
Even Pros Ask Whether To Let an Expert Handle Their Mowing
The final tip is possibly the most interesting one: even lawn care service experts consider having a trusted colleague mow their lawn for them. After all, most professionals are out handling their clients’ lawns, so having an expert in their field make their lawn look great is a logical choice.
Consider this yourself: do you want to try to achieve a picture-perfect lawn yourself, or would you prefer to leave it to those with experience? Only you can answer that question, but here are some final questions you can ask yourself:
- Do I want to spend time on lawn care each weekend?
- Do I have the correct equipment for mowing and trimming?
- Am I willing to take care of this equipment when it needs maintenance?
If any of your answers are “no,” it may be time to consider leaving professional-quality work to a lawn mowing service near you.