Throughout the winter our lawns have been largely dormant and what growth there has been is often untidy, so we need to make a first cut. The question is when? The books will tell you that grass starts to grow when the soil has warmed up to 5 degrees which is a bit ridicules because it’s not so easy to take the temperature of a lawn! I do it the other way around and wait for the grass to make an initial spurt. Then I know the time is right to get out the mower and get to work.
Now the question is what height should I cut at and how often should I cut.
Before we look at this we need to put our lawn into a context. People have many different expectations from their lawn. Some want to have a lawn like the greens at St Andrews whereas others want a lawn that looks good and again there are those who may have a family and want their lawn to be able to sustain hard ware. All these lawns need a different level of maintenance and inputs, but for the purposes of this blog I want to assume that we would like to create a good-looking lawn which can be used for family leisure.
For the first cut I suggest that the mower is set at 2 inches. Then for the next cut lower the mower to 1.5 inches. After that we need a regular maintenance cut. Now this is where my advice has changed. I used to say that the regular maintenance cut should be between 0.75 inches if you feed and water your lawn regularly or 1.00 inches if you are less maintenance minded. However, the hot dry summers of the last few years have changed my thinking and I now recommend 1.25 inches cut and for most people no lower. In this way the lawn should look good and keep in good heart throughout dry periods.
One last thing to remember is that you should never cut more than one third of the length of the grass in any one cut. So, you may need to take more steps than I have suggested. Thanks for reading this blog so far and do enjoy your lawn this year after the wet winter people are saying we will have a long dry summer but I prefer to wait and see.
