Mowing Your Lawn
How soon after your new turf is laid should you mow it?
Start mowing your lawn after 2 weeks of laying, but lift a corner to check that it has sufficiently rooted.
What height should you mow your turf?
Never mow any more than 1/3 of the sward length in one cut. Use the mower on a high setting to start and then mow again a few days later to reduce the height.
How often should you mow your turf?
Repeat mowing once a week from Spring to Autumn.
Should you collect your grass clippings?
What kind of lawn mower is best?
We have found that petrol rotary lawn mowers generally give a better quality of cut but understand that they are not always suitable. It is important to buy a mower with plenty of power to maintain blade tip speed. Make sure your mower has a rear collector bag/box and the blade is regularly sharpened. We would NEVER recommend a hover mower.
Want a striped finish?
Striping is just the grass laying down in different directions. The darker shade of green is the grass laying toward you and the lighter green is the grass laying away from you so a striped lawn is easy to achieve if your mower has a rear roller. Wheeled rotary mowers do not roll the grass in each direction. Rectangular lawns are easier to stripe than irregularly shaped lawns, but with a bit of practice, you can stripe up any lawn.
- Start by mowing around the edge of the lawn
- For square or rectangular lawns, work from the left side, mowing up and down the lawn using the straight lawn edge as a guide to get a straight line
- For circular or irregular shaped lawns, line up the mower with a focal point to achieve an initial straight line across the widest point. This first straight line can be your guide for subsequent stripes
- At each turn, line up the mower so that the next mown stripe slightly overlaps the last
- Empty the clippings box regularly. A full box can deposit clumps of clippings on the lawn, spoiling the finish and clogging the mower
- Tight corners may need strimming, or hand trimming with lawn shears, if they are too small or boxed in for the mower to reach
Sharpening your Mower blade.
Is your lawn mower blade dull? Sharpen the blade twice each season to help maintain a green, healthy lawn. A sharp blade not only cuts blades clean so grass plants recover quickly, it helps reduce your lawn mowing time.
A dull blade rips and pulls the grass blades, leaving ragged tears that both weaken the plant and promote fungal growth and other grass diseases. A sharp blade, on the other hand, cuts cleanly, allowing the plant to heal and recover quickly. Sharp blades also let you complete your lawn-cutting chore faster and with less stress on the mower. Sharpening is a simple task, even for a beginner. Plan to do it twice every mowing season.
Dull Mower Blade Sharpened Mower Blade
Rotary vs Cylinder
Rotary mowers are the most common lawnmower, they rely on the speed of the horizontal blade to chop through the grass and this motion allows for easy grass collection. Due to the chopping motion, it is essential to keep the blade sharp but rotary mowers are otherwise very low maintenance.
Cylinder mowers are more commonly seen on golf courses, this is because they offer a very high quality of cut. The high quality of cut that cylinder mowers give is because the cylinder spins against a flat blade giving a scissor like cut. However, due to this action cylinder mowers will need constant adjustment and the blades will need professionally regrinding or the mower will cut worse than a rotary mower. Cylinder mowers can mow the grass far shorter than a rotary however if you mow the grass to short it can cause stress to the lawn. Cylinder mowers are not suitable to use if the grass grows long.
Summary: If you want a close mown, picture perfect lawn, you would be better to use a cylinder mower but they will need more maintainance and you may still need to use a rotary mower at times. A good rotary mower with a sharp blade is more suitable for most lawns.