How to Mow Your Lawn Like a True Professional

After spending over two decades in the lawn and landscape industry, if there’s one thing I know, it’s how to mow a lawn.

Though mowing grass seems like a simple task, 95% of homeowners get it wrong. Heck, even most professionals get it wrong.

This is the formula I trained every person I hired, and a big part of how I was able to grow my landscaping business before I sold it a few years back.

How to Mow Your Lawn: 7 Easy Steps

1 – Invest in a Good Lawn Mower

Here’s the reality: if you buy a crappy lawn mower you won’t get good results, at least long term. One of my former colleagues Ryan Jackson, owner of Ryan’s Lawn Mowing in Austin, TX used to always say, “A good mower is worth it’s weight in gold. You’re s*** out of luck without one.”.

Or it will take you FAR too long do do a half-decent job. A good lawn mower will cut the grass fast and clean, and won’t require a whole lot of maintenance. Here are my personal favorite lawn mowers:

Read our buying guides on the best push mowers, the best reel mowers, and the best riding lawn mowers for more info.

2 – Start with sharp blades

Mowing with dull mower blades is perhaps the most common, and consequential mistake when it comes to mowing your lawn.

When your blades are sharp, the grass is cut cleanly and the whole blade stays healthy. When the blades are dull, the grass gets torn – not cut. When grass is torn, it is stressed because you are pulling it’s roots out a little bit and harming the uncut part of the grass blade.

So whether using a push mower or a riding mower, make sure you start with a sharp lawn mower blade. Be extremely careful when removing your blade – always remove the spark plug or you risk starting the engine. With your hand by the cutting blade.

You can then use a metal file or a bench grinder to sharpen the blade, or take it in to have a professional do it. Reel mowers are a bit tougher, but who uses those anyways?

In summary: Dull blades = un-healthy lawn. Sharp blades = healthy lawn. Keep your blades sharp.

3 – Cut only a little off at a time

Many tout the one-third rule when it comes to mowing grass. That is, that you should only cut off 1/3rd of the length of the grass when mowing in order to not strain the grass. Of all the lawn mowing tips out there, this is of the most important.

This is especially true if you’re applying a good lawn fertilizer and your grass is growing super fast.

I prefer to think of the 1/3rd rule as a maximum. By all means, do not cut more than 1/3rd off. However, you should aim to cut as little as possible at any given time. There’s a reason why the top golf courses and athletic fields are cut multiple times per week. The less you cut off, the less stress, and the stronger and greener the grass becomes.

If you want to get sophisticated about this, look up the proper mowing height for your grass type. This can differ by region, so it’s best to check your local turfgrass extension.

Of course, this usually means you need to mow more often, but you should never have to mow more than weekly. Additionally, the more you water and apply lawn fertilizer, the faster the lawn is going to grow. However, if you want to mow like a pro, try and more more frequently than less.

Finally, for taller grass, it’s usually better to cut it down over time, rather than chop off a whole lot of it.

In summary: cut no more than one-third of the grass blade.

4 – Alternate cutting patterns

There are really two sorts of patterns you can use when cutting grass.

The first mowing pattern is back and forth – you start at one side of the lawn, mow til you reach the other side, and then come back. This is most common, and best to use when cutting rectangular, standard lawns.

The other is more of a circular pattern, which is typically used with odd shaped yards or those that have trees or flowerbeds in the center. Here, you start by mowing in a circle, and work your way outward or inward.

No matter which pattern you use, be sure to alternate which way you go. For example, if you normally start left and go right, try starting left and mowing right the next time. If you start at the inner of a circle one week, start at the outside of the circle the other week.

The idea here is that every time your mower blade cuts the grass, it knocks it down a little bit. After several mows, it will start to lean one way. Alternating cutting directions helps it stay vertical and health.

In summary: Remember which way you cut last time. Cut the other way this time. Different directions can really help the way your lawn looks.

5 – Use a mulching blade and leave your clippings in the grass

Mulching blades are a type of mower blade designed to chop up grass clippings into little pieces so they can fall down into the lawn, decompose, and provide fertilizer. While most lawns still need extra fertilizer, grass clippings applied regularly are a big help.

If you don’t like the sight of grass clippings, don’t worry! Assuming your grass isn’t wet or too long, the clippings will appear practically invisible (and there’s a trick in the next step to help this). Additionally, they won’t cause thatch, again assuming the grass wasn’t too long or wet to begin with.

If you’ve let your grass get out of hand, there’s nothing wrong with leaving unsightly clippings out. Or, you can prefer to bag them and recycle them, or use them as compose to help feed your plants or shrubs.

In summary: Nobody wants to clean up grass clippings, and grass clippings are good for your lawn’s root system. Leave clippings on the grass.

6 – Mow over your clippings

When choosing with direction and pattern to mow, you always want to be mowing over the clippings produced in your previous pass. Why? this causes the clippings to be cut up even finer, which means faster decomposition into fertilizer. However, it’s important to alternate cutting patterns (remember step 2) so that one side of the lawn doesn’t get more fertilized than the other.

7 – Never mow when wet

It’s pretty simple – don’t cut wet grass.

While trained lawn care professionals can often get away with mowing in light rain or while the grass is barely damp, you generally want to avoid mowing when the grass is wet. You’re more likely to get ruts in your lawn (whether you can see them or not) and you are likely to end up cutting unevenly and clumping up grass. Better to play it safe and not mow when it’s wet. This is especially true with a new lawn, where the grass doesn’t have the deeper root system of established lawns. Also, time of day matters if you have morning dew – mow after it’s dry.

In summary: don’t cut grass when it’s wet, it will hurt you and the lawn.

Lawn Mowing Ain’t Rocket Science

No matter what type of grass plants you have in your yard – from Kentucky Bluegrass to Zoysia, mowing your lawn is one of the most important things you can do for a healthy lawn. All you need to do is follow the aforementioned 7 steps, and you’re a whole lot closer to a nice lush lawn than any of your other neighbors.

Want to learn more? Check out the video by Organo-Lawn of Boulder below. At about the 1:20 mark, he provides a side by side example of grass that’s been properly mowed, vs grass that’s been mowed poorly. The results are astonishing.

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