Can you mow grass when it’s wet?
After a light rain appeared to thwart their plans for working in the yard over the weekend, or after they awoke to find their grass soggy from heavy dew, many homeowners have questioned themselves this very question.
Answer: If it’s raining, you shouldn’t trim the grass since it will make a mess. Before starting the lawn mower, you should wait until the grass on the yard has completely dried out for a number of different reasons.
The First and Most Important Reason Not to Mow Wet Grass Is for the Health of Your Lawn
1. The health of your Lawn
If there is a disease in the lawn, which has a greater propensity to occur when the grass is wet frequently due to excessive rainfall, the mower will spread the illness across the yard, which is the primary reason for not cutting wet grass. In addition, if there are weeds in the lawn that are about to go to seed, dispersing moist seeds could result in an even worse weed infestation.
2. Clogging and Clumping
When the grass is wet, lawn mowers, even those with keen blades, sometimes do not make clean cuts. These damp clippings have the potential to clog your mower, which means that it will need to be cleaned out on a regular basis, which can be hazardous.
The damp clippings will cause mowers to jam, and the machine will then spit out clumps of the wet grass. If you do not rake those clumps off of your lawn, they will eventually suffocate and kill the grass that they are covering, leaving behind unsightly dead spots.
3. Danger of Slipping
Wet grass is slippery. You don’t want to put yourself in a position where you’re more likely to trip and fall when pulling a mower that’s running. If your grass is slanted, you need to use extra caution.
4. Wheel Ruts
When the soil has received an excessive amount of precipitation, it may become boggy. When you mow your lawn when the grass is excessively wet, you run the danger of tearing up the grass and creating unattractive wheel ruts in your yard.
5. Clothing with a Discoloration
When you walk over damp grass that has been recently cut, you should check your shoes. When you cut wet grass, it leaves more of a stain on your clothes and shoes than when you cut dry grass, which makes it more difficult to clean up after a morning spent working in the yard.
If the ground is saturated, or if you get that sinking feeling underfoot, or if there are obvious puddles, you should not mow it. If you must mow, park the mower in the garage. If that is not the case for your lawn and you have no choice but to mow, consider putting these ideas into practice.
Raise the cutting height of the mower to lessen the number of clippings produced.
You can accomplish this by reducing the width of the swatch you’re mowing so that each pass will cut less grass.
In that case, you can kick back and take pleasure in watching your lawn dry.
