How Often Should You Cut Grass?

Mowing your lawn at different times of the week, just like watering and even fertilizing, can greatly help your lawn blossom and become a full lush lawn. More importantly though, you want to mow your yard enough to keep up with it, but a lot of people still wonder how many times to cut the grass – and for good reason. If you cut it too much, you can cause more problems with your grass, or cut it too short which can hurt your lawn. If you don’t mow it enough, you’re going to constantly end up with more clumps and thicker debris and clippings, so it will make it harder to grow your lawn, while also subjecting it to possible diseases and even fungal issues. Therefore, we’re going to give you a simple but efficient guide that may be able to help you when it comes to how many times you should mow your lawn.

Regular Maintenance is Absolutely Necessary

One thing is for certain, a lawn takes care and proper maintenance on a regular basis can go a long way. There are some people who believe that they need to mow their grass every other day, while there are others who don’t believe they need to mow but once every week or two. Believe it or not, both are wrong. However, there are a lot of things that can be accomplished with routinely caring for it. We’ll get into that later though, because we understand that there are a lot of things that you can factor in, from weather, all the way to life itself that may hinder your ability to mow your lawn, and weather can make your lawn grow a lot faster if it is just right too (causing you to have to cut it more often). Either way, your lawn can benefit a lot because of the following things:

  • Sunlight and Nutrients Help

By cutting your grass regularly and weed eating properly, you’ll allow youth lawn to get the sunlight it needs in order to thrive and get the vitamins it needs from the sun (yes, even plants get vitamin D and other vitamins from sunlight). At the same time, it will also allow your grass and clippings to provide the nutrients that your grass and soil needs to keep its pH balance up and feed your lawn.

  • The Roots Will Spread Better

Grass roots that grow in a solid line often form clumps of grass in your lawn rather than spreading it out evenly. By adding regular maintenance to the mix, your grass roots will branch out more, and then you will have less “clumps” of grass, and this has numerous benefits on its own. It helps future mowing, and it even helps you to have finer and healthier grass instead of thick “balls” of grass.

  • You Can Keep Pests Down

Pests are more rampant when you don’t mow. Rodents, bugs, and even fleas (and chiggers) love long grass that isn’t mowed properly. You want to cut your lawn enough so that the pests can stay out of your lawn, but keep it long enough so that the helpful bugs (even spiders can be helpful as long as they don’t infest your grass – they help regulate the smaller bugs that can be harmful to your lawn). By mowing your yard properly, and keeping it healthy, you can keep infestations from happening.

  • You Can Actually Help Your Lawn’s Recovery Time

Some pests and harmful lawn diseases (and funguses too) thrive from improper maintenance and mowing of your lawn. If you mow your grass on a regular basis, you may end up having issues from all sorts of things, including the weather. However, with regular maintenance and mowing, you can even shorten the time it takes for your yard to recover after you mow it, which is essential for its health.

Factors That Affect Grass Cutting Frequency

Some things are at play aside from just the weather. Here is a list of factors that can help to determine how often to cut your grass.

  • What Type of Grass it Is?

The type of grass can thrive at different times and lengths. Some can be mowed a little shorter, while others may need to be left longer depending on the type. Most importantly, different types of grass like Kentucky Bluegrass, and St. Augustine grass can grow at slightly different rates naturally.

  • How Fast it Grows

Of course, this is a factor that is important. As mentioned above, some grasses grow faster and taller than others. However, what’s most important is that your lawn is mowed according to how fast it grows too. Weather can also be a part of this, and so can regular maintenance.

  • How Tall Your Grass Is

When your grass is taller, you will have more problems, and it will be harder to cut. At the same time, your grass will be more subject to getting infestations the longer it is. Try to maintain an average of 2 inches minimum. If your grass is about 3 inches, then you can cut it. Just remember to set that. Otherwise, follow the one-third rule. Meaning, you’re only going to cut a little off the top to keep it growing well.

  • Wet or Dry?

You should never cut your grass wet, but we understand that sometimes you just have to. Either way though, try to make sure your grass is always dry when you mow, and avoid cutting it during the bad times of the day if possible.

Conclusion

The amount of times that you’ll have to mow your lawn each week to have a healthy lawn depends on a lot of things, and you do at least want to mow it once each week. But whether or not you mow it more than that depends on the above factors. Just keep an eye on the length of the grass and make sure that when you mow (even if it’s taller) that you’re not cutting off more than a third of it at a time to ensure that lush and full lawn you want.