Don't let your Fescue get this high!!

I have gotten many people over the years ask me why my grass cutting business was so successful and why my properties always look good.  I think are are many reasons, but the one I want to talk about today is, how do you cut the certain types of grass.

If you did not already know, there are many different types of grass, and they all take different maintenance to maximize their potential.  Here in Nashville, we typically have three types of grass…Fescue, Bermuda/Zoysia, and Weeds.  Yes, weeds are a type of grass around here because many yards have no actual grass, it is all green weeds that get mowed down level each week.  Sad ain’t it?  Anyway, Fescue and the Bermuda/Zoysia grasses need to be taken care of very differently.  We will start with Fescue…

Fescue is what they call a cool season grass.  This means it thrives in the cooler weather and will be green throughout the cold months.  It grows in clumps.  What that means is when a seed makes a plant, it only makes one plant and that one plant will grow tall, but never make other plants, except by new seeds if you let it grow that long before cutting it (which most people call that a hay field when it is that tall!).  That is why it is very important to overseed every fall to replenish any plants that died during the summer.  Now, back to mowing; Fescue needs to be mowed according to the weather.  That means in the spring time when we are getting all the cooler wetter weather, mow the fescue roughly 3 inches.  If you mow it much shorter than that, you will damage the plant beyond repair because as we talked about earlier, it is a clump grass.  Ok, once the summer arrives, it is very important to start cutting your fescue 4 inches or higher.  The reason being, for the most part, whatever growth you have above the ground, is what you have below the ground (meaning the root system).  Because Fescue is a cool season grass, it will get stressed out in the heat of the summer and cutting it long is critical to its survival.  Fescue will many times turn brown in the really hot and dry summers.  This is nothing more than its natural survival technique.  Once the summer is over and the fall weather arrives, start mowing it again at the 3 inch mark.  This height is great to shade out weed seeds so they cannot germinate and grow.  During the winter, fescue just sits there, green and gorgeous.

In our next blog, we will discuss the Bermuda/Zoysia family of grasses and find out how to cut and maintain them.

Happy Fescue