Mowing Height in Winter

Our warm season lawns have slowed down in most states as the temperatures have decreased. Your lawn won’t completely stop growing through the winter in Australia, it will just grow at a much slower rate. Once soil temperatures drop below 14 degrees Celsius your grass will enter into a slower rate of growth to conserve energy which is known as dormancy.

An important thing you can do to help your lawn adjust to the cooler temperatures is to increase the height of your lawn mower. Keeping the mowing height nice and high will give your lawn the best chance to absorb sunlight and nutrient. A longer leaf will help block out weeds and help your lawn to retain its colour for longer. A healthy lawn heading into winter will ensure it is better prepared for the cold and frost and help it to achieve a quicker spring recovery.

As a rough guide, you will only need to mow your lawn every few weeks during winter. This will differ depending on the turf variety you have. While we recommend you leave your lawn longer, make sure you don’t let it get too long either. Longer than 5-6cm and it will prevent sunlight from properly penetrating the grass profile and you may cause scalping when it comes to mowing again. Scalping will then leave browning of your lawn, which will leave it susceptible to disease and weeds.

Like the issue caused by scalping as mentioned above, resist the urge to give your lawn a really low cut early in winter in an attempt to get out of having to mow again for a longer period of time. This will leave your lawn much more susceptible to winter weeds and frost as well, which will give you a lot more work to do come spring to get it back to its best.