Fort Smith Lawn Care | What are the Dangers of Over Mowing?

Have you ever heard of a burnt lawn? We’re not talking about a burn from a fire, or a carpet burn from when you put in hardwood floors and drug the old carpet to the street; we’re talking about lawn burn from mowing too often and/or too short. Most people burn their lawn without actually knowing it’s happening. That’s why we think this is crucial information for the community to know.

There are a multiple ways burning can happen to your lawn. One of the most common causes is when people continuously mow their lawn too short and scalp it. Now this is distinguishing from the spring scalping we’ve talked about in a previous article. A beginning of the season scalping is great to rid your yard of dead grass that’s blocking the sun from the new growth early on. However once the grass is green and growing, it is not good and healthy to scalp it, because you’re hindering the photosynthesis. Grass soaks in the sun through the blades, so the more blade there is, the more sun it absorbs. If you scalp a good healthy yard, you’ve taken it’s ability to take in the vital sunlight. That’s why you can’t cut it too short, or too often. Though lawns need to be mowed, if you mow it too often—even if it’s not scalped—it can still keep it from taking in enough sunlight.

Another cause that comes from some even slight inexperience is mowing with dull lawn mower blades. As we have also talked about in a previous article, the dangers of mowing with dull blades is more than you would think. Not only does it damage the blades by tearing them instead of cutting them cleanly, but the damage it causes can also impede the blades ability to soak in the sun, causing yard burn yet again.

There’s so many things to keep in mind when taking care of your lawn and landscaping. It’s time to skip the headache and time wasted on faulty technique and just hire the professionals at Cutting Edge Lawn Care.

Fort Smith Lawn Care | Is it ok to Mow Right After the Rain?

We get it, sometimes the rain is relentless and there’s nothing you can do about it. Especially in Arkansas, in May. Sometimes you don’t have a choice, cause it’s been raining for two weeks straight and the grass has been growing non stop, and it’s not gonna dry out before the next two weeks of rain, so you gotta do what you gotta do. But if you can help it at all, should you mow right after it rains and before the ground dries?

No. Not if you care about your yard and your lawn mower. If you have a choice, here are the reasons you should abstain from lawn mowing right after the rain:

1. Ruts. When it rains and the ground is soft and muddy, when you drive a lawn mower across it, you’re going get make ruts, or maybe even get stuck and create a huge mess, and it’s going to take a while for your yard to recover from that.

2. Clumps. Maybe the ground is firm enough to not get stuck, or maybe you break out your push mower. It’s still a bad idea, because the grass is soaked, and when the lawn mower spits out the grass clippings, it’s going to be spewing hideous clumps of grass all over your yard. We haven’t run across a customer who likes this yet.

3. You’re going to hurt your lawn mower. You may think, that you’ll just put your mulch plate on so it’s not spitting out all the grass clumps. Well this can be very harmful for your lawn mower, because all those clumps are staying in the deck, and turning into a giant clump that’s dulling your blades enormously, not to mention bogging your engine down, and sometimes, will break your belt because of the strain. We’ve done it all, none of it is good or fun.

4. Stains. When these clumps are laying all over the ground and you’re running over them with your lawn mower, the tread in your wheels and tires are filling with this wet grass. When you drive or roll across your driveways, sidewalks and streets, you’re going to smear grass and stains all over them, and it’s not easy to clean up.

These are the main reasons we found to avoid lawn mowing directly after the rain. We hope this helps you avoid messing up your own lawn and equipment, as well as provide some understanding why Lawn care services want to wait till the yard dries before providing service. We have your lawn and interests in mind.

If you’re lawn care company is not mindful of your lawn and messing it up, call the professionals here at Cutting Edge Lawn Care to get your best lawn now!

Fort Smith Lawn Care | Tips for Mowing Zoysia

Lawn mowing season is fast approaching in Fort Smith, and at Cutting Edge Lawn Care, we’re very excited. We wanted to drop a few quick tips to keep in mind when mowing and caring for the most tricky grass around: Zoysia

Zoysia is a beautiful, lush, luxurious looking grass, unless you mess up when it’s time to start mowing. Common mistakes when it comes to mowing zoysia are: Mowing too short, Mowing too high, not bagging when needed, not scalping in the spring, creating ruts with the mower. Here are some tips to avoid these mistakes.

Mowing too low, and Mowing too high. It is more harmful to mow it too low, because zoysia is slow to recover, but if you let it grow too long, and keep it too high, it can also not be as healthy as it should. The best height for Zoysia is between 2.5” to 4”.

You don’t always have to bag Zoysia, but better safe than sorry. Thatch build up is the enemy of Zoysia, and cutting too many clippings without bagging, is the quickest way to create it.

Ruts can be created when you always mow in the same pattern. With a Zoysia lawn, the soil is usually softer so running even a push mower over the same path week after week creates noticeable unevenness which can result in scalping and eventually ruts.

As we wrote in one of our first articles, it is very important to actually scalp zoysia in the spring when it starts to turn green. Even though scalping in the summer can be deadly, in the spring, when it starts to turn green but before it’s very tall, it’s very helpful to cut away the old dead grass and bag it, so that it doesn’t compact under the new grass and create thatch.

We hope you find these tips helpful and informative for this lawn mowing season. And as always, remember the easiest way to take care of your lawn is to hire a professional lawn mowing service. Of course, we prefer you hire Cutting Edge Lawn Care.

Fort Smith Lawn Care | What is the Proper Mowing Height?

We’re only a couple months away from lawn mowing season, and here at Cutting Edge we are already gearing up and signing on new customers. With Spring right around the corner and people looking for Lawn mowing services it’s important to make sure you’re hiring the professional lawn care company who knows what they’re doing, or your lawn could suffer the consequences of inexperience.

One of the most important factors to consider is to make sure your lawn mowing and lawn care service know the proper height to mow your grass. Each type of grass has to be handled and cut differently. Here in the Fort Smith area the three types of grass we see most (aside from yards made of weeds) are Bermuda, Fescue and Zoysia. Zoysia and Fescue are the more picky and fragile types so if you have a yard comprised of one of these, you definitely need to make sure your lawn mowing service is knowledgable.

If you Have Zoysia, here in the very hot weather of Arkansas, we typically need to mow it between around 2-3” but you must make sure that if when you cut it lower, you do it often enough that you’re not cutting off more than 1/3 of the grass height. otherwise you could scalp it and cause unpleasant brown spots.

For Bermuda, the best cutting Height is usually between 1”— if you cut often enough— or as most people do, let it grow to about 3” and cut back to about 2” weekly.

If you have a shady spot in your yard where Bermuda and Zoysia won’t grow, and now you’ve brought in the shade friendly Fescue, you need to mow it around 3.5”-4”.

We hope you find these articles helpful and informative, and don’t forget, the best way to take care of your lawn is to hire a professional. So call Cutting Edge and let us handle your lawn care and landscaping!

Fort Smith Lawn Care | How Often Should Grass be Mowed?

Usually when someone calls Cutting Edge Lawn Care to inquire about lawn mowing quotes, one of the questions they ask is: “how often do you mow?” and the answer is that we will mow the lawn as often or as little as the customer requests, because it’s their yard and we do what the customer wants. But how often is grass actually supposed to be mowed?

When it comes to lawn mowing schedules it depends on the grass, because all grasses grow at different speeds. Bermuda is a very common and popular grass, and it grows very fast and steady as long as it has plenty of water and sunshine. In the summer, usually it needs to be mowed at least every week if not more (we’ll come back to that) Zoysia is also a common grass around here, it is very lush and thick but is slower growing. A good healthy Zoysia yard, with plenty of water and sunlight can be mowed as often as every week, and sometimes as little as once a month. It depends on where you live and how often you treat it, and how much water it gets.

The general rule of thumb for the health of the grass, whatever the grass, is that you mow as often as needed where you’re only cutting off about a third of the height of the grass. For Zoysia, this can be every week or every two weeks, or sometimes once a month. For Bermuda, it technically needs to be mowed twice a week in the summer.

Few people have this much time to contribute to the yard and mow it as often as it needs. But if you call Cutting Edge Lawn Care we can set you up on a lawn mowing schedule that is as often as you need it, or as often as you want it. It’s your choice, and we’re happy to oblige! Call us for all your lawn mowing and lawn care needs, whether in Fort Smith or the surrounding area.

Fort Smith Lawn Care | Why you need to scalp your bermuda and zoysia grass in the spring.

We get asked all the time, “should I scalp and bag my lawn?”. Well the simple answer is “it depends.” It depends on the kind of grass you have, when the last time you mowed was, how short the last lawn mowing was, has it grown since the last mowing?

To try to make it as simple as possible, if you have zoysia or bermuda, then yes you should scalp and bag it, and here’s why. If you want an easy example look around town for someone who hasn’t trimmed they’re monkey grass all year. you’ll see a really ugly dead brown plant. When the spring comes around the brown grass doesn’t turn green, but new growth springs up from the ground. If you don’t cut back the dead grass, then you’ll hardly even notice the new growth, and it certainly won’t be pretty. Your lawn is the same, to promote healthy new growth and make sure it looks lush and green, you need to cut back and dispose of the old dead growth.

This is why in the spring, before lawn mowing kicks off, you need to mow much lower than you normally would, and bag and dispose of the clippings. According to fairwaylawns.com/lawn101/mowing you don’t want to scalp until all chances of frost are gone. Usually the ideal time for scalping lawn mowing is roughly between March 15th and April 30th. Once you’ve got this done you’re geared up for a lush successful lawn mowing season.