Mowing and Seeding Your Lawn in September

I know a lot of people are just trying to clean up the yard. Well, we’re coming into a time of year where you can finally address the grass issue as we continue to get more rain. We haven’t had enough yet, but as we continue to get more rain going into the first week of September, it’s a great time to overseed the grass or new seed. It’s Ohio, so it varies, but generally in September, we get consistent rain.

The soil temperature is still warm enough to get the grass seed to germinate and establish itself in the fall. I’ve got some spots in the yard, always from the dogs. So I’ll be going back through and overseeding my grass here shortly. We could still get warm, but we’re not going to stay warm for really long stretches anymore. So as we cool down, you can also lower your cutting height on your mower back down. 

We’ve been up maybe as high as three and a half, four inches in the summer months, because that creates shade and helps trap moisture in the soil. If you cut too low in the summer, you expose that soil to the sunlight and the heat, and it just dries it out even worse.

But as we cool back down this fall, um, that grass kind of gets tall and leggy through the summer and kind of lays over on itself. It is time to start to work it down. I wouldn’t drop it like an inch at a time. I drop it, you know, half inch each time you mow and just kind of work back into getting that grass a little bit shorter as we cool down and get more rain.

Now if your whole lawn is brown. We just stop mowing right at that point. You really don’t want to be there when we’re super dry and super hot, because you can actually break the crown of the grass. 

Kind of the same thing in early spring when we have frost in the ground, driving on the grass is not great for it until the frost melts off. So you never mow real early mornings in the early spring. And as we cool back down here, get a little bit more rain, then you can get back on that grass and mow then. You don’t want to be ruining the grass for next year. Look at us planning for next year already. It’s kind of sickening. It’s amazing how fast everything goes.

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