As the temperatures decrease our warm season lawns slow-down in most states. Your lawn won’t completely stop growing through winter in Australia, but it will just grow at a much slower rate. Once soil temperatures drop below 14 degrees Celsius your grass will enter into a slower rate of growth. The effort to conserve energy is known as dormancy.

An important thing you can do to help your lawn adjust to the cooler temperatures is to increase the height of your lawn mower. Keeping the mowing height nice and high will give your lawn the best chance to absorb sunlight and nutrient. A longer leaf will help block out weeds and help your lawn to retain its colour for longer. A healthy lawn heading into winter will ensure it is better prepared for the cold and frost. This will help it to achieve a quicker spring recovery.

As a rough guide, you will only need to mow your lawn every few weeks during winter. This will differ depending on the turf variety you have. While we recommend you leave your lawn longer, make sure you don’t let it get too long either. Longer than 5-6cm and it will prevent sunlight from properly penetrating the grass profile. This may cause scalping when it comes to mowing again. Scalping will leave browning of your lawn, which besides being unsightly, will leave it susceptible to disease and weeds.

Resist the urge to give your lawn a really low cut early in winter in an attempt to get out of having to mow again for a longer period of time. This will leave your lawn much more susceptible to winter weeds and frost as well.

This will just give you a lot more work to do come spring to get it back to its best.  Mowing heights in winter will be a determining factor in your lawn’s spring time health. 

For information on caring for your lawn visit our Lawn Care Page.