Can You Cut Your Lawn Too Often?


Having a healthy lawn in your compound or workplace calls for more than just planting grass. Like any crop in our garden, a lawn requires regular maintenance. Weeding, watering, spraying, and trimming are some of the regular maintenance practices that will make your lawn green, neat and healthy-looking. If not done correctly, however, they can also make your lawn unattractive and unhealthy.

Cutting your lawn too often can affect your grass negatively. Regular trimming is recommended, but you should do it sparingly. Setting your mower too low will leave part of the ground bare and cause a loss of nutrients and moisture from the soil. The prevailing climatic conditions also determine how frequently you should cut your lawn. During the rainy season, you can cut your lawn weekly because the grass sprouts fast, but in the dry season, you should do it fortnightly or monthly.

There is more to do for your lawn to remain healthy and appealing. This post outlines some daily, weekly, and monthly practices to make your lawn greener, neater, and more attractive.

How Often Should You Cut Your Lawn?

To determine how often you should cut your lawn, consider the following factors.

  • The prevailing weather conditions and season. 
  • Your desired height and thickness.
  • The rate and stage of growth.

Grass grows faster in warm and humid conditions. During this season, you can mow your grass weekly or after 10 days. When the dry season sets in, you should reduce the mowing frequency to enable the grass to conserve nutrients and moisture in the soil.

How high you want your lawn to grow is another factor to consider, but as a rule of thumb, always trim a third of the height of the blade of grass. The remaining stem should be at least three inches high.

In the early stages of development, grass grows faster and has a high concentration of auxins. At this stage, you can trim your grass more frequently but take care not to tamper with the roots and leaves. The concentration of auxins reduces with time and the growth rate decreases, calling for less frequent trimming.

Is it Okay to Cut Grass Every Day? 

Frequent grass-cutting improves its thickness because it eliminates auxins and causes gibberellins to dominate. Gibberellin hormones are responsible for horizontal growth and boost the lawn’s thickness. You should, however, note that cutting grass daily has adverse effects on its health. Cutting leaves the blades with wounds that require time to heal, and doing it daily means the grass gets no time for healing. 

Furthermore, cutting grass daily leaves the soil bare hence encouraging soil erosion and subsequent loss of fertilizer and moisture from the soil. Loss of nutrients and moisture makes the grass turn yellow and unhealthy. 

To counter the effects of loss of water and nutrients, regular watering and administering fertilizers are necessary. This however requires money, time, and labor. To lower the burden of watering grass after cutting and adding nitrogenous fertilizers, it’s best to avoid cutting your grass every day.

Does Frequent Mowing Thicken Grass?

Yes, frequent mowing thickens grass and makes it greener. But the mowing has to be done correctly. The minimum height of grass after mowing should be about three and a half inches. Also, when trimming grass, set your mower to a third of the blade. 

Other factors favor the thickening of a lawn, such as weeding and adding fertilizer to the lawn. Note that if you mow your grass more frequently, it encourages the accumulation of thatch. Thatch is the dead material from plants and comprises roots, young stems, dry leaves, and crowns. 

Accumulation of thatch is detrimental to grass growth and interferes with the functions of roots and leaves. Also, frequent trimming of grass affects the growth of roots, leaving the grass looking withered because of transpiration and lack of strong anchoring by the roots.

Next time you go mowing your lawn, ensure you leave enough leaves to keep the grass healthy and flourishing.

How Many Times Do You Mow Your Lawn in a Year?

There is no set number of times to mow your lawn in a year. The number of times you mow depends on some factors such as:

  • The type of grass. Some breeds of grass, such as perennial ryegrass, grow faster than other breeds and therefore should be trimmed frequently.
  • The prevailing seasons.  A warm season with high humidity favors the growth of grass. From the onset of spring to the start of winter, the growth rate is at its peak as the warmth from the sun supplies the grass with energy for food production. At this time, you can trim your lawn weekly. At the onset of winter, the grass becomes dormant, and the growth rate reduces. During the fall, the mowing frequency reduces until the onset of autumn.
  • The preferred height of the grass. We have different preferences in the height of the grass on our lawns. A person who prefers short grass will trim his grass more frequently than one who prefers it longer.

From the above factors, there is no standard number of times to mow your lawn in a year. The common frequency, however, ranges from once a week to once a month. This translates to a range of 12-50 mows in a year.

Why You Shouldn’t Mow Your Lawn Every Week

The primary reason for mowing a lawn is to keep it neat and maintain the desired height of the grass. Mowing also improves the thickness of the grass and keeps it green. You should, however, note that too much trimming has some negative effects on grass, such as:

  • Decolorization of the grass. Frequent trimming of your lawn deprives the grass of its leaves and leaves it with more wounds that may take a while to heal. Loss of leaves affects photosynthesis, leaving the grass unhealthy.
  • Growth of weeds. Too much trimming of grass exposes bare land and encourages the sprouting of weeds. This increases competition for nutrients between the grass and weeds, leaving it unhealthy.
  • Loss of nutrients in the topsoil. Frequent cutting of grass exposes the topsoil to the agents of soil erosion like wind and water. This leads to the loss of nutrients and minerals in the topsoil, leaving the grass deprived of minerals and other nutrients from fertilizers.
  • High rate of evaporation. Long grass offers a protective cover to the soil and serves as a mulch that conserves soil moisture. When you trim your lawn weekly, you expose soil to the heat from the sun, which increases the loss of moisture through evaporation.
  • Frequently trimmed glass blades are sharp and uncomfortable to walk on barefoot. Sometimes we love walking around the lawn barefoot, but grass blades that are mowed frequently may prick your feet and cause injury.

Final Thoughts

As you can see, mowing your lawn too often is not only possible but can also cause a lot of problems. I hope this article was able to help you take better care of your lawn!

Peter Toth

Hi! I'm Peter, the owner of BackyardGadget. Working around the house has always been a big part of my life. I've created this site to share my experience, and to help people choose the right tools for the job. Thank you for stopping by!

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