How to Mow to Get Lush, Greener Grass: These 5 Gems of Expert Know-How Will Transform Your Lawn Without Any Extra Time, Effort or Expense

Mowing grass isn’t a difficult task, but have you ever stopped to wonder if you’re doing this core piece of lawn care right? Because these simple expert insights into what’s important when mowing make all the difference between a tired, patchy lawn and a velvety sweep of healthy grass with a dense, plush pile.

I’d been mowing my lawn for a decade before an elderly neighbor shared these grass-cutting gems with me one spring. I’d presumed his lawn was so luxuriantly lush because he spent hours tending to it – not so. Turns out that a few easy switches mean the grass grows thicker and greener. And now I’m a gardening editor, another decade with a far lusher lawn behind me, it's my turn to share these expert lawn care tips.

Mow a lawn this way and it doesn’t take any more time than usual, nor does it need any major investment in equipment (I've included some product links so you can see exactly what I'm talking about: if you're a regular gardener, you probably already have most of these in your shed). But you'll be surprised to see how much better your now-lush lawn looks by summer. Here are the five golden nuggets of lawn mowing expertise you need to know.

1. Longer Grass Grows Stronger Roots

An average square foot of a healthy lawn contains around 3,000 blades of grass, and each one of those blades is working as a solar panel to photosynthesize sunshine into energy for growth. And the plants aren’t just growing above ground, their roots are expanding underground. By keeping your lawnmower blades higher in spring when the weather is moist and warm enough for strong growth – 1½ inches above ground level is perfect – you’re effectively creating a far larger surface area of those thousands of solar panels, and that will generate more energy to fuel deeper roots.

Deeper roots means grass plants can access more moisture and nutrients, which leads to a thicker lawn that stays lusher through summer.

By all means gradually drop the mower blade to 1 inch above ground level for a plusher finish in summer, but until then, leave your grass a little longer so roots grow a lot stronger. If you’re happy with the look of your lawn a little longer, then keeping it at this height through summer, too, shades roots and help the plants retain moisture.

2. Sharp Mower Blades Bring Greener Grass

Cutting grass with blunt blades brings the same issues as slicing anything else with an unsharpened edge: it takes longer, and doesn’t do the job well. Dare I ask when you last sharpened the blades on your lawnmower? Because experts recommend you resharpen them after every eight hours of mowing time.

Cutting your lawn with blunt blades shreds the grass tips, and these torn edges take longer to heal and lose more moisture than clean cuts made by sharp blades. This is energy that the plants could be putting into growth. Those shredded ends often turn brown in hotter weather, too, making your lawn look far from lush.

It only takes 10 minutes to sharpen a mower blade, and you’ll easily get that time back as mowing with sharp blades is a far quicker job. It’s simple, too. First of all, disconnect your mower from its power source – and that means removing the battery from a cordless mower as well as unplugging an electric mower. Next, put on a pair of protective gloves such as these from Amazon.

With most mower designs, it’s best to remove the blade from the mower chassis, by undoing the mounting nut. A simple sharpening stone such as this from Amazon is all you need, or it’s quicker with a nifty sharpening tool like the Sharpal Multi-Blade Sharpener, also available from Amazon. If you’ve got a hand drill, eye protection and a vice, then a blade sharpener bit that fits into any standard drill, like these from Amazon makes it even easier.

If you’ve had your mower for a long time, then replacement blades are easy to fit, if you discover yours is past its best.

3. Regular Snipping Creates a Denser Sward

Just like when you prune any garden plant to encourage it to put its energy into strong new stems, every time a grass plant has its leaf tips snipped off by a mower blade, it’s stimulated to grow. With vertical growth restricted, it’ll grow laterally, putting out new shoots to the sides. This is why mowing your lawn once a week, shaving just the tops off, naturally leads to a much thicker lawn than if you wait till the grass really needs a cut and mow less regularly.

It’s also why robot mowers are so effective at creating such lush, healthy lawns. As they’ve become more widely adopted, these time-saving devices have dropped significantly in price and typically use sensors rather than boundary wires to navigate – this LawnMaster Mow Robot on Amazon cuts lawns up to 150m² and costs less than $300.

But even if you have an ancient push-along mower, I’ll wager you spend just the same amount of time in total if you mow your lawn once a week or once every two or three weeks, because it takes far less time to mow a regularly cut lawn. Another benefit of regular mowing is that you’ll interrupt the lifecycle of many weeds.

Of course, how fast grass grows is very dependent on weather conditions so, as a general rule, mow regularly enough that you never need to remove more than a third of the grass blade height – and ideally less – each time.

4. Grass Clippings Are a Natural Fertilizer

In spring, grass is full of nitrogen, which is the element included in lawn fertilizers to fuel leafy growth. So you can use your lawn to feed itself. Many modern mowers now feature a mulching mode – even cheaper models such as this well-priced Black+Decker mower on Amazon. In mulching mode, the clippings are chopped up very finely so they can be left on the lawn to slowly break down and fertilize the grass.

This is a cost-effective way to feed your lawn in spring for strong growth, as it replaces the need for a granular fertilizer. The mulch must be light so as not to suffocate your grass plants, so only do this task once you’re mowing your lawn regularly, rather than on the first cut of the season. It works best if you mulch-mow within a week of a previous cut. Choose a dry day, too, so the clippings don’t clump together.

You can mulch with grass clippings even if you don’t have a mulching mode on your mower, but it takes a little longer. Again, choose a period of dry weather, within a week of a previous cut. Then mow twice over your lawn to chop the clippings up finely, and rake out any clumps with a springtine rake such as this from Amazon.

5. Mixing Up Mowing Patterns Avoids Compacted Soil

We all have a favourite way to mow our lawns, and it’s likely that you always cut the grass following a similar route. Over time, this can lead to unsightly ruts forming, and areas of compacted soil that make it harder for grass to grow well. A good way to switch up your mowing routine is to mow around the lawn perimeter, then adopt a different pattern to fill in each time you mow: back and forth in straight lines, diagonally, cross-hatching, spiralling into the centre, or whatever you fancy!

Apply all these simple snippets of lawn-mowing know-how, and you’ll have a far lusher, greener lawn by summer. Now is the prime time to prep your lawn for year-long results, so put them into practice next time you mow as part of your spring lawn care. By summer, when the results will be speaking for themselves, perhaps you can be the one to pass these expert insights on to a friend or neighbor, and keep the lawn love going!