Lawn Care must do: MOW HIGH!

The key to the lawn care game is competition. You want to make things favorable for the grass and unfavorable for the weeds so the grass will choke out the weeds. Naturally.

Although we use pre and post-emergents at our disposal we want to encourage natural solutions first and foremost.

Lawn Care must do: MOW HIGH!

There is a fight for the sun between Grass and Weed. If the grass doesn’t shade the weed, the weed will shade the grass. Sun is food needed during the photosynthesis process. Food is strength and life. Shade is weakness, disease, and death. Grass will shade the weeds only if it is tall enough. The shade of tall, dense grass turf will prevent essential light from reaching most weeds and, will aid in the destruction of new baby weed seedlings germinating (such as the notorious dandelion).

MYTH: “If I mow short, it will be long until I have to mow again.” False! Wrong! (SLAP! SLAP! SLAP!) Your grass needs grass blades to do photosynthesis (convert sunshine into sugar) to feed the roots. When you whack the blades off, the grass has to RACE to make more blades to make sugar. It then grows amazingly fast. This fast growth uses up a lot of the grass’s stored sugar and weakens the plant. It is now vulnerable to disease and pests! Tallgrass is healthier and can use the extra sugar to make rhizomes (more grass plants) thus thickening the turf. Have you ever noticed that short grass in the summer is always riddled with dead brown patches?

If you have a serious weed infestation, consider mowing twice as frequently as you normally do. The sensitive growing point for grass is near the soil. The sensitive growing point for most weeds is near the top of the plant. So when you mow, it’s as if you are giving your grass a haircut and cutting the heads off of the weeds.

Finally, when mowing, be sure to leave the clippings on the lawn. It adds organic matter and nutrients back into the soil. If you don’t leave the clippings, your soil will begin to look more like “dirt” than soil. Soon it will be a form of cement that nothing will grow in and you will have the world’s most pitiful lawn. Some people are concerned about “clumping” – that only happens when you mow too short or when you don’t mow often enough.

Mowing higher gives the following perks:

• more shade to the soil leads to less watering
• deeper roots which lead to less watering
• thicker turf which leads to fewer weeds
• slower growth which leads to less mowing

Check out this pic. Someone started to mow and then I convinced them, as an experiment, to set their mower higher. This pic was taken about six days later as summer is setting in. Can you see the difference?

***The majority of the information shared here is from richsoil.com***

Higher Ground Lawn Care and Lighting are ready to take your property to a higher level. Experience why your neighbors and businesses in University Park, TX & surrounding areas choose Higher Ground Lawn Care & Lighting to bring their property to the next level. Contact Us at (682) 206-3596 or check out our website today.