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How to tend to your lawn

Jim Boxberger
Posted 5/27/22

Well, we are getting towards the end of May and the Memorial Day Weekend is upon us.

Like many of you, I plan on having friends over for the holiday weekend so my lawn had to be mowed. With the …

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Garden Guru

How to tend to your lawn

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Well, we are getting towards the end of May and the Memorial Day Weekend is upon us.

Like many of you, I plan on having friends over for the holiday weekend so my lawn had to be mowed. With the “No Mow May” campaign coming to an end this Tuesday anyway, I mowed my lawn this week.

My dandelions are done blooming (picture #1) and now I have plenty of flowers in the flowerbeds blooming for the bees to pollenate. Now this is the time of year that you don’t want to have a bagger on your lawnmower and here is why.

Cutting a lawn this late in the season when my grass is between eight and 12 inches tall, all of the grass has gone to seed. This seed can be used to thicken up your yard if mowed properly. Mow your lawn on the highest height setting and let the cuttings lay on the lawn for a day or two while they dry.

Then tend your lawn. Just like a farmer making hay, tedding fluffs your cuttings so that they can dry faster and as your cuttings dry they release the seed and your cutting pile up in rows on your lawn (picture #2).

To tend your lawn just go over it again at the high setting, this will also take care of any of the grass that may not have been cut completely with the first cut. A day or two after that, mow your lawn as you normally would at your regular height setting, but start at the center and mow outward as this will send cuttings away from your lawn.

Also by now many of your cuttings will start to turn to mulch and help to fertilize your lawn, but more importantly the seed will fall from the seed heads and settle down in your lawn (picture #3).

In a couple weeks these seeds will start to grow and thicken in any sparce patches on your lawn. If your lawn is already lush and beautiful the new seed probably won't be able to take hold as our ground can only sustain so many grass plants per square foot.

This is what I caution customers about all the time when they are buying grass seed. Typically someone will buy a 25 pound bag of seed for an area that a 10 pound bag would easily cover, but they think that more is better and that is just not the case.

Our ground can only support a certain number of plants per square foot and you can't change that. Also adding good soil on top of our natural soil will not help, but that is another story.

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