How To Cut High Grass

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There are a number of reasons that you could find yourself in a situation where you need to be cutting tall grass that has simply become too thick or too tall to cut or mow very easily. And though you really should strive to never cut your grass more than 1/3 of its full height, there are times when you simply have to cut your grass more than that. Maybe you just bought a house and the yard was uncut for several months or maybe you went on a long vacation and came back to an extra high lawn or maybe the summer rain was just coming down too frequently for you to get out and do some proper grass cutting and your high grass started going to seed.

One method for cutting tall grass is to mow paths that are only half as wide as your mower deck.

Whatever the issue, cutting tall grass is something you want to be careful with and do properly or you could end up damaging your lawn mower or even seriously injuring yourself or others. Here’s what you need to do if you’re faced with the need to cut down some tall grass.

Cut Grass When It Is Dry: Sometimes the weather doesn’t work with you on this one, but it’s always best to mow your lawn when the grass is dry. Dry grass is less slippery, won’t clump as much and is much easier for your mower to cut. Tall wet grass has a much higher chance of stalling your mower or really slowing your blade down to the point where it doesn’t cut very cleanly.

Cut Your Grass Higher: If you’re having a difficult time cutting through tall grass, you may have to take some extra time and effort and actually go over your lawn twice. First, mow on the highest setting possible and then, if you like your lawn shorter (and it’s healthy enough to handle it), lower your mower and go over it again. If you space out the two mowings by a couple of days you’ll help keep your lawn healthier. Ideally, you should probably be keeping your grass fairly tall anyway. Most lawn grass will stay healthy when it’s about three to four inches high.

Mow Your Lawn Slowly: This is probably an obvious one, but it’s also one of those things which will work. When you’re having a hard time cutting tall grass with your mower it’s usually a simple problem of too much grass being hit by the blade at one time. Logically if you move your mower over the tall grass or weeds slowly you’ll be allowing grass to hit the blade all at once, which gives the mower a chance to really cut up your lawn well. If you are using a self-propelled mower that doesn’t have variable speed you may want to opt to push your mower manually just to make sure you have full control.

Cut Half-Way Paths of Grass: Similar to mowing slower, you can move your mower so that it only ever cuts about half of the width of the mower deck in any single pass. So while you might normally walk from one side of the yard to another leaving a 20 inch mower path (the same width as your mower deck) if you are having problems cutting tall grass you may want to move your mower so that the edge of the high grass is aligned with the center of your mower. Essentially, you’re going to be cutting a 10 inch path instead of a 20 inch path through your high grass. Yes, this means it may take you twice as long to cut your lawn, but at least it will be cut.

Bag Your Grass Clippings: I personally try to mulch my grass whenever I mow my lawn, especially now that I’m using a new Troy-Bilt lawn mower. The clippings generally make for great mulch in the yard and most lawn and garden experts recommend leaving the clippings on the ground in order to have healthier grass from one year to the next. That being said, the extra clippings on the lawn can sometimes slow down your lawn mower if you’re cutting tall grass, so bagging your clippings and then disposing of them in a compost pile could help.

Lawn Mower Maintenance: There are a number of things you can do to take care of your lawn mower, but some of the most basic ways to make sure your mower is running well enough to cut grass is to make sure you’re using fresh clean gas and a new air filter. Both of these things are easy to do and they can help your mower engine run much more smoothly. You’ll also want to consider replacing the mower blade or sharpening the one you have. A dull mower blade will just beat-down high grass but may not cut it very well at all.

Cut Your Lawn Manually With a Sickle or Grass Whip: If you have a lot of really tall grass (like a field or side of a hill) then you might want to consider going the manual route to cut your grass. It’s good exercise and a quiet and super-energy efficient way of cutting grass from the time before lawn mowers. There are a variety of scythes, sickles and grass whips available which are all essentially just various sized and shaped poles with sharp grass and weed cutting blades on the end. I’ve had a chance to use an old-fashioned grass sickle and it’s actually remarkably efficient way to cut down large swaths of grass with one fell swoop. Today’s modern grass whips are light and sharp and you can actually cut a fair bit of grass rather quickly when you get into a swaying groove. There’s very little bending involved if you get one that’s meant to be used from a standing tall position. That being said, these things are dangerous if you’re not careful and they don’t magically pick up your cut grass. You’ll probably want to rake your cut grass up after you’ve gone over it manually.

Obviously, you can use most of these methods together in order to get that tall grass cut down. Allowing your grass grow high can be a nuisance to deal with at first, but once you’ve cut it down the first time subsequent lawn mowing tasks should be much easier as long as you don’t let it get too tall again.

This entry was posted on June 2, 2010 at 3:13 am and is filed under Lawn and Garden. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.