5 Lawn Mowing Mistakes That Damage Your Grass

Mowing seems like the simplest part of lawn care, but it's also where most lawn damage actually happens. A struggling lawn usually isn't missing some special fertilizer or treatment. More often, it's being mowed in a way that works against it, week after week.

The encouraging part is that mowing mistakes are easy to fix once you know what they are. Here are the five most common lawn mowing mistakes we see across Ontario, and what to do instead.

Cutting the Grass Too Short

This is the most damaging mistake on the list. Cutting your lawn very short, sometimes called scalping, might seem efficient because it buys more time before the next mow. But grass cut below 5 cm dries out quickly, develops shallow roots, and leaves sunny gaps where crabgrass and other weeds take hold.

The cool-season grasses common in Ontario lawns, like Kentucky bluegrass, are healthiest kept at 7 to 9 cm. If your lawn always seems to struggle in July, try raising your mower deck a notch. It fixes more lawns than fertilizer does.

Mowing Wet Grass

After a few days of rain it's tempting to mow the moment the sky clears, but wet grass makes for a bad cut. The blades bend over instead of standing up to the mower, leaving the lawn ragged and uneven. Wet clippings clump together and can smother patches of your lawn, and mower wheels leave ruts in soft ground.

Give your lawn a few hours to dry after light rain. After a heavy soaking, wait until the blades are dry to the touch. Your lawn will look noticeably better for it.

Mowing with Dull Blades

A dull mower blade doesn't cut grass, it tears it. Torn blades of grass have frayed tips that turn brown within a day, giving the whole lawn a whitish or tan haze after mowing. Torn grass also loses more moisture and is more vulnerable to disease than cleanly cut grass.

Sharpening your mower blade once or twice a season is one of the cheapest improvements you can make to how your lawn looks.

Bagging Every Clipping

Many homeowners bag their clippings automatically, but leaving them on the lawn is usually the better choice. Clippings are mostly water, break down within days, and return nitrogen to the soil, adding up to roughly a free fertilizer application over the season. And despite the old myth, clippings do not cause thatch.

Bagging still makes sense when the grass got too long and is sitting in clumps, or when you want a manicured look for an event. Just remember that many Ontario cities, including Toronto, don't collect grass clippings as yard waste.

Mowing the Same Direction Every Time

It feels natural to follow the same route around your lawn each mow, but grass adapts to it. Blades start leaning in the direction they're always cut, and the mower wheels compact the same tracks into the soil week after week.

Alternating your mowing direction each visit keeps the grass standing upright and spreads out the wear. It's also the secret behind the striped lawns you see on sports fields, which are just grass bent in alternating directions catching the light.

Mowing Done Right, Every Visit

Avoiding these mistakes takes a bit of attention every single mow, which is exactly what you're paying for with a quality lawn mowing service. At LocalStudent, our local students mow at the right height, with sharp equipment, on a schedule that suits your lawn, so the most common mowing mistakes never touch your grass.

Our Lawn Mowing Service Areas

We offer quality lawn mowing services in the following locations:

Ajax, Aurora, Barrie, Brampton, Burlington, Cambridge, Etobicoke, Guelph, Hamilton, Kingston, Kitchener, London, Markham, Mississauga, Newmarket, North York, Oakville, Oshawa, Ottawa, Pickering, Richmond Hill, Scarborough, Thornhill, Toronto, Vaughan, Waterloo, and Whitby.

Contact LocalStudent for a free lawn mowing quote today, and support a student in your community!