# What height do you keep your lawn at in the fall?



## polofitted007 (Sep 16, 2019)

Type: TTTF
Height: 2.5"

Not sure this is correct but hoping to start a collaborative thread and also gain some information...


----------



## Suburban Jungle Life (Mar 1, 2018)

TTTF at 1.75"


----------



## LawnOrder (Sep 29, 2019)

Type: PRG [Manhattan 5]
Height: 1¼" to 1½"

@polofitted007 - I don't drop down, but in part, it's situational. I bag the leaves, and my normal HOC simply happens to work best with the bagger's vacuum fans:



Caveat: it's an _established_ PRG lawn in Zone 5b - Zone 6 which enjoys tremendous snow cover from late Autumn through early Spring, and trained pretty happily to a 1¼" maintenance cutting. YMMV.
.


----------



## badtlc (Aug 22, 2019)

I am experimenting between 2.25" & 2.75" right now with my TTTF/KBG. I think I finally learned my lesson that my grass will not thrive at or above 3".

I really like 2.25" for probably 90% of my yard but there are a few spots with mower rut issues and undulations that get scalped too much at that height for my comfort.


----------



## pennstater2005 (Jul 17, 2017)

I'll try to get to 2.5". Easier to do when it isn't stressed.


----------



## g-man (Jun 15, 2017)

@LawnOrder you don't typically need to overseed?


----------



## deboy922 (Aug 27, 2019)

2.5" as snow mats it down if 3" or taller


----------



## LawnOrder (Sep 29, 2019)

g-man said:


> @LawnOrder you don't typically need to overseed?


@g-man - Fortunately, I don't, as a general rule. Again, this is a well-established lawn for the most part, and the lawn itself is simply a part of a larger stewardship to the plants, the trees and the animals who inhabit the place. I do plan the lawn's Summer "rest" period to coincide with the PRG going to seed, and hence, in high Summer, the lawn overseeds itself for the most part. I do scratch-seed around the perimeters of the mulch beds beginning September first each year, where tire scuffs have thinned the lawn over the course of the year's mowing, but that's simply a part of mowing with a 2+ ton tractor - just as core aeration becomes a necessity owed to compaction across the season's mowing.

The lawn is dense enough that you'd have to get on hands and knees and part the blades with your fingers to see any ground below it - in part from having been mowed quite short for many years, but the condition of _any _lawn - even a fair sized country lawn such as this one - comes down to the "above and below" factors.

Here, I'm fortunate to be close enough to Lake Ontario to be a part of the microclimate which deposits so much precipitation that the wet part of "above" is pretty constant. The rest of the "above" factor is what we put on our lawn_ intentionally,_ and in the interest of soil health (the "below" factor), I'm generally quite cautious about what I use beyond pre-emergent and post-emergent herbicides. I'm a proponent of Milorganite (6 63 bag pallets annually, in three applications, for just under 7 acres of PRG) for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that it genuinely seems to encourage earthworm production, and the more worms _beneath_ the lawn, the denser and thicker the lawn will be _above_ ground. I steer clear of insecticides, and when bagging the season's leaves each Autumn, change the upper take-up hose (about the fan) to one with a coarse screen at the upper extremity, so that the finest particles of leaf material are ejected out onto the lawn to bolster the organic matter available to the soil through the Winter months. Though admittedly not very short, that's the short answer to _why_ overseeding is superfluous to a lawn with good soil conditions; the long answer would get me banned for excessive bandwidth use.



Disclaimer: I don't believe that there's any right or wrong way to go about achieving the goal of having a lawn which is æsthetically pleasing. I personally feel - and this _entirely_ personal opinion - that taking into account microbe activity and worm bed depth under a lawn is of paramount importance, and strive to make a careful examination of anything I add to the lawn beforehand. YM - as the old saw goes - MV.
.


----------



## social port (Jun 19, 2017)

I keep my grass at the same height throughout the year. I don't like to change HOCs. 
Currently, they look like this:
KBG: 2.5
TTTF: 4.5, and then I have a smaller plot enclosed in a fence that I keep at 2.5.


----------



## Jtgorman75 (Jul 31, 2019)

2" PRG.


----------



## g-man (Jun 15, 2017)

@LawnOrder I was more concerned with how you handle winterkill of prg. I only know for prg only lawns in the PNW and LawnTips lawn in Australia.


----------



## LawnOrder (Sep 29, 2019)

g-man said:


> @LawnOrder I was more concerned with how you handle winterkill of prg. I only know for prg only lawns in the PNW and LawnTips lawn in Australia.


@g-man - I see very little Winterkill here. The snow cover and the nitrogen content of the soil at the season's end combine to keep things pretty healthy. Manhattan 5 is notorious for its overwintering properties and holds up extremely well under cold weather conditions.

Here's a shot of a little portion of the south lawn taken last December, just before Christmas, after a thaw exposed the entire lawn:



The lawn generally awakens here rather happy and healthy, breaking dormancy quickly and smoothly, and having suffered very little at the hands of Jack Frost. Nope - it will _never_ be Lawn Of The Month on TLF, but that's not its job, really. It's only there to give me something to mow now and then.


.


----------



## Mark B (May 30, 2019)

LawnOrder said:


> The lawn generally awakens here rather happy and healthy, breaking dormancy quickly and smoothly, and having suffered very little at the hands of Jack Frost. Nope - it will _never_ be Lawn Of The Month on TLF, but that's not its job, really.


I don't know about that. Your care of the soil is very commendable. I respect that very much as I'm sure many others do.
It would possibly be a rather different "win" but a very well earned one. 
Regardless, your lawn looks excellent and you seem to understand where it's at very well, hats off to ya


----------



## LawnOrder (Sep 29, 2019)

TheWhiteWizard said:


> LawnOrder said:
> 
> 
> > The lawn generally awakens here rather happy and healthy, breaking dormancy quickly and smoothly, and having suffered very little at the hands of Jack Frost. Nope - it will _never_ be Lawn Of The Month on TLF, but that's not its job, really.
> ...


@TheWhiteWizard

Diolch yn fawr iawn
Ar ran fy lawn(t).

Awfully kind of you, really.
.


----------



## CPA Nerd (May 8, 2018)

2.75 after it comes out of summer dormancy. 3.25 the rest of the season.

I told myself I will never go higher than 3.25 inches again. I may just stick with 2.75 year round moving forward. I have the common "matting down" problem in many areas of my lawn.


----------



## lawnkanuck (Sep 19, 2019)

I mow at 3 inch but I want to try bringing it down to 2.5


----------

