Conserve Water With Our Best Mowing Grass Tips

How does mowing grass, or changing how you mow grass, conserve water? The experts at Nutri-Lawn Burlington Irrigation Inground Sprinklers love to help homeowners conserve water. Here are a few simple tips that you might not have thought of to help conserve water simply by changing how you mow grass. Of course, we’d also love to help you further conserve water with one of our inground sprinkler systems.

Leave Grass Long
This seems like a bit of bad advice at first glance because the whole point of mowing grass is to keep it short. Many homeowners mow grass too short hoping that they’ll have to mow less often. Instead of mowing grass so it’s shorn close to the ground, leave it to grow a little longer (2-3inches). Grass cut too short is more susceptible to disease, weeds, and other problems. Those inevitable bumps and ruts in your lawn leave bare patches that dry out and create ideal conditions for weeds.

At some point, most homeowners will fall behind on mowing grass either due to a vacation or busyness. Long grass is harder to mow because it stays wet near the soil no matter how dry the tops are. Longer grass retains moisture better than too short grass. If water conservation is important to you, raising the deck on your mower so the grass is left a little longer is a great tip.

Longer grass shades the soil helping with water conservation, resists weeds and disease better, and is better able to resist mid-season heat and drought.

Leave The Grass Clippings
Grass clippings are a pain if keeping them off your lawn is a priority. Grass clippings are tricky to compost and most often end up in landfill. Instead, why not recycle those grass clippings and provide your lawn with a natural mulch and fertilizer.

Mow grass around the perimeter of your lawn first shooting the grass clippings toward the centre of the yard. Continue to do this as you mow closer to the centre so you pass over the clippings repeatedly to further break them down. Grass clippings break down quickly and naturally add nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus to your lawn’s soil (this is best done on a dry lawn as wet clippings clump and kill the grass underneath). Grass clippings also act as a mulch helping soil retain moisture and discourage weeds.

Grass Loves Level Ground
Is there a part of your lawn that slopes, is heavily shaded all day, or is persistently soggy? These are not the ideal conditions for lawns. Grass loves level ground in full sun or part shade. Instead of pushing a mower up and down that hill, staring at grass too long to cut because the ground is soggy, or grass that’s stunted and patchy – why not look for plants more suited to those conditions? It will mean less work, less runoff, and the yard will look better because plants that love those conditions will flourish there.

Shade loving plants, native plants, these will all conserve water better than grass in these poorer soil conditions.

The experts at Nutri-Lawn Burlington Irrigation Inground Sprinklers love to help our customers conserve water. Call us today for your irrigation consultation. We can help you every step of the way!