Mowing your lawn may see like the easiest task when it comes to lawn maintenance. But following a few recommended tips for mowing your lawn could have you seeing a big difference in the health and appearance of your turf. Try a few of the following lawn mowing tips and see if you notice a change.
Best Mowing Practices for San Antonio Lawns
- Sharpen your mower’s blades. It’s best to have your mower blades sharpened about every 3 months, but at least try to sharpen them once a year. Cutting your lawn with dull lawn mower blades causes your grass to shred or tear. It not only harms the aesthetic aspect of your lawn, but the damaged grass blades are more susceptible to disease and insect damage (insects see damaged plants as a welcome sign to come feed.). This task tends to get overlooked often, but can make a big difference to the health of your lawn.
- Mowing height – Rule of thumb: You should only be removing 1/3 of the leaf tissue each time you mow. The exact height for which you shoot for is going to depend on the *type of grass you have in your landscape. But you should always keep your mowing height consistent. There is really now need to move the height of the mower up and down if you keep it at the setting recommended for your turf type. (See below)
- Frequency of mowing – Mow when your lawn needs it. The frequency of your mowing doesn’t matter as much as keeping it at the recommended height. (See above and footnotes below) If we’ve had heavy rains in the spring and you’ve fertilized, your lawn could be going gangbusters and you may have to mow it every week. If we are on water restrictions for the umpteenth week and your lawn is drought stressed, you probably don’t need to mow it til it recovers. Know the *optimal height for your lawn and strive to keep it there.
- Alternate mowing paths – If you take the same route each time you mow, you might find you’ve created a visible pattern in your lawn. So the next time you mow, try something different. Mow diagonally, or start from where you normally end, just switch it up each time.
- Leave healthy grass behind – As long as your turf is disease and weed free, leaving your grass clippings behind and not bagging them is beneficial. You are basically returning nitrogen back to your turf as the grass clippings breakdown (free fertilizer!). Spread out big clumps of grass clippings with a rake if needed. (If turf is diseased, bag and discard into the trash or your lawn bin.)
- Compost your lawn clippings – Grass clippings are an awesome way to add nitrogen to your compost piles. Bag up disease-free, weed-free, lawn clippings and toss them into your compost bins. Our warm season grasses head into dormancy about the time the leaves begin to fall. Before storing your mower, use it to run over the leaves and mulch them so they can continue to add nutrients to the turf.
- Clean your mower before storing – When it’s time to store your mower, give it a good cleaning before you put it to bed. Empty out the remaining oil and gas, and if you choose, you can sharpen blades now so it’ll be one less chore to take on before spring.
Recommended mowing heights for specific warm season grasses:
- Bermuda: 2 1/2″ – 3″
- St. Augustine: 2″ – 4″
- Zoysia: 1/2″ – 2 1/2″
- Ryegrass: 1 1/2″ – 2 1/2″
As long as you are mowing within these ranges, you are allowing your grass to grow consistently at its preferred height. Follow the “no more than 1/3 removal of leaf tissue” and you and your lawn should be sitting pretty.
Extra lawn mowing tips:
Even before grass begins growing in spring (when temps get around 65 and higher), you can bring your lawn mower out early and ward off early weeds from germinating. Mowing weeds helps keep seed heads from dispersing and germinating. Bag your mowed weeds and toss them in the trash.
Don’t forget to fertilize in spring and winterize in fall so you’ll have a healthy, vibrant lawn to mow!
~The Happy Gardener
this is very informational, Ive wanted to use my clippings as a fertilizer but been too afraid itll just cause a patch on my lawn. Thanks!
With all the rain, I am having to mow my weedy alley behind the back yard fence along with our St. Augustine lawn. Any problems with the mower transferring weed seeds to the lawn? The St. Augustine is healthy, and we plan to mow the alley often enough to keep it at a 3-4″ height.
This rain has been crazy, right?!
Try giving your mower a quick spray from the hose to flush off any seedheads that might be stuck to it before returning to mow your healthy St. Augustine. This will help eliminate the cross contamination. Good for you for mowing the back alley some though, this will greatly help prevent those seedheads from floating over to your well-kept lawn.
Thanks for explaining that you should sharpen the blades on your mower once every three months to prevent damaging your grass. Now that my brother has recently bought a home, he would like to find a quality lawnmower that is easy to maintain so that he can ensure that his backyard is ready for parties. Maybe he should learn how to maintain a lawnmower before he buys one.
He might want to consider an electric lawn mower. I use a Ryobi. They are a decent price and they have sales that make it even cheaper. It is a hard plastic, light weight and uses a battery. They have a system that allows the battery to be used with other items in their line. It even has head lights! I’ve used it at 8pm before! With an electric, there is no gasoline or oil needed. Good all the way around. It is also much quieter than a gas mower. My neighbors don’t know when I’m mowing, they never hear it inside. I’m a 63yr old woman who does all the lawn work myself. I can actually pick up that mower if I have to when it gets stuck in a corner. One battery lets me mow my small front and back yards, but I do have an extra one for when the grass is real high.
Thanks for the suggestion! That does sound like it makes this garden chore somewhat easier.
Thank you for posting great content and for giving out valuable knowledge! Starting a new lawn care business and just found the information on here very useful! The easiest things are sometimes the hardest to do!
Hi Joseph,
Thanks for reading and for the kind words! Best of luck to you with your new business!
Really enjoyed the article! Thanks for clearly laying out how to keep a lawn healthy. Sometimes it seems like people want to make it super complicated. Thanks again!
Thanks so much for the kind words, and thank you for taking the time to read our information.
This is one of the best articles I have seen in a long time! Thank you for sharing~
Thank you for taking the time to read and comment. We really appreciate it.
Thanks for the great content. Cant wait to read more of your works.
Thanks for the great content. Can’t wait to read more of your works.
My lawn is covered with leaves. Should I rake or use the mower to mulch?
Hi Kat,
The answer is both…kind of….? Let me explain: If your mower can finely mulch, the lawn will benefit from nutrients provided by the mulched leaves as they decompose back into the soil. However, if the leaves on your lawn are inches deep, you might need to remove some of them because your lawn definitely needs to be able to soak up the sun’s rays and layer upon layer of leaves block those.
You can also throw leaves in to a compost pile, or bag them up and tuck them out of the way and allow them to decompose throughout spring and summer and you’ll have some wonderful, nutrient-rich material to use in your gardens come fall.