How to Mow Your Newly Turfed Lawn
Mowing your lawn regularly is essential for keeping it healthy and attractive over the year. As well as encouraging the grass to grow more thickly, creating a lush, denser look, it also blocks out weeds and makes the grass more robust and hardwearing. So, it’s best to start as you mean to go on and mow your lawn correctly from the very start. Mowing mistakes can ruin the appearance of your lawn whilst preventing it from developing as it should. Read on to find out how to mow your newly turfed lawn for the first time.
Before you start mowing your new lawn, it’s important to pay some attention to your lawnmower. Clean and then sharpen its blades, making sure it will be able to cut the grass effectively. If the blades are blunt, you risk ripping rather than slicing the grass blades. This can lead to portions of grass being pulled up during mowing and cause it to look ragged and discoloured. Diseases can also develop if the blades are dirty too.
Many people aren’t sure when to mow their new lawns for the first time. After all, if you do it too early, you risk putting the grass under significant stress, but if you wait too long, you may miss the chance to thicken the turf at an early stage. It’s important to find the right balance so that your new lawn thrives.
Whilst the grass plants in the turf are relatively mature, they may have lost significant root mass throughout the harvesting process. Therefore, before you start mowing, it’s important that the roots have begun to regrow again. To test if the turf is ready to lay, give it a tug. If it lifts up when you tug on it, wait a few days longer. The turf lifting up is a sign that the roots need longer to settle in. If the grass clippings come off in your hand, it’s time to get your mower out. Your new lawn is ready for its first cut.
A green, lush lawn that’s been freshly laid is such an inviting sight that you’ll probably want to start using it right away. However, you should wait a while before you start enjoying picnics and letting your children play on it.
Young grass plants simply aren’t robust enough to cope with heavy use. You need to wait until the
roots have bedded into the soil. This may take a number of weeks or sometimes months. One big sign that they’ve rooted is that you won’t be able to lift up a corner of the new turf easily. To ensure the durability of your lawn, you need to ensure that the roots are strong enough to support fast regrowth.
Mow your new lawn regularly until the roots have become well-established. Doing so will ensure that your lawn not only looks green and lush but that weeds are kept at bay too. Avoid cutting your grass too short. This will weaken the grass, impacting its health and appearance.
Many lawn owners in the UK attempt to emulate those beautifully maintained bowling greens and golf courses, scalping their lawns back to next to nothing. However, this is a sure-fire way to ruin your lawn. Ideally, keep the height of your lawn at around 5cm during the first six to nine months.
When you mow your lawn, you’re essentially removing nutrients from it. Therefore, you need to take steps to replenish those nutrients. Create a lawn care regime that includes frequent lawn treatments. Applying a pre-turfing fertiliser around six weeks after laying the turf can be helpful. This will help to improve the soil fertility before laying turf. After that, you should feed the grass every six to eight weeks ideally. Choose a lawn feed that’s suited to the season.
There are few things worse than spotting weeds sprouting up on your beautiful new lawn. Whilst laying turf usually suppresses any weed seeds, they can sometimes appear, ruining the look of the freshly laid grass. Sometimes weed seeds are blown in with the wind. Sometimes they are delivered by the birds. If gaps exist between the grass plants, the seeds may germinate and potentially grow into plants.
Though the grass will often outcompete most weeds, with the mower helping to get rid of the rest, you may need to pull some out the stronger, more troublesome weeds. Do this as soon as you spot them. Although it can be tempting, don’t apply herbicides to your new lawn. This could damage the grass, potentially beyond repair.
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