hi I'm Brad wolf with organa LAN and today we're gonna talk about how to properly mow a lawn mowing lawn is something that should be very simple and easy however many homeowners and even professionals make major mistakes when mowing a lawn first mow the grass tall at least 3 inches or above second mow once a week and third sharpen your blades at least once every 4 mows the biggest mistake we see in lawn mowing is that the lawn is being mowed too short and when we say too short that's anything less than 3 inches tall so the actual foliage of the grass is where the plant stores its water and if you mow it tall it will be more drought tolerant and you won't have to water the lawn as frequently a less commonly known affect of mowing height is that the taller you mow the grass the deeper the grass roots will grow as a general rule grass roots will go about 3 times as deep as the lawn is mowed tall I've been mowing this section of the lawn at two different heights to show an example as you can see I've been mowing this right side at two inches in height and the left side at three inches in height and as you can see the section I've been mowing at 3 inches has a much deeper dark green color and I'm gonna take a core sample out of each section and this left side that I've been mowing at 3 inches in height will have roots that are growing 9 inches deep and this right side as you can see the roots are only growing about 6 inches deep about 70% of homeowners mow their lawn too short and I have a theory as to why this is and I believe it's because most lawn mowers have about 5 or 6 different settings on their lawn mower homeowners believe the highest setting is too high and the lowest setting is too low and so they put it on the middle setting and in reality the highest setting is usually the appropriate setting so our recommendation is set the lawn at the highest setting and then use a ruler to measure the mowing height by raising the mower height to at least 3 inches the turf will use less water it will have better color it will promote deeper digging roots it will increase the turf density will have fewer weeds and it's easier on the person mowing the lawn a few other important tips about lawn mowing or to mow the lawn once a week it is important to do this so you don't remove more than 33% of the grass foliage per mowing another question we get asked about lawn mowing is if it is ok to mulch the grass clippings back into the lawn and the answer to that is yes as long as the grass clippings are not clumping up on the lawn the grass clippings are actually beneficial for the microbial and bacteria bed in the soil and they add additional organic matter back into the lawn another tip for lawn mowing is to rotate the direction of the lawn mowing from lengthwise to width wise and diagonal every week this will help so the grass does not get pushed over in the same direction a common maintenance item that homeowners often forget is to sharpen their lawn mower blades if you notice that the blades of the grass are white or torn this is a clear tell sign that the lawn mower blade needs to be sharpened trimming is another aspect of lawn care that we often see being done improperly we recommend trimming the edges at a 90 degree angle instead of a 45 degree angle the reason for this is if edges are trimmed at a 45 degree angle this could create an environment that allows crabgrass to move in and grow and we also recommend trimming at 3 inches tall instead of 2 inches tall I know we covered a lot of different aspects of how to properly mow the lawn if you take one tip away from this video it should be that mowing the lawn at 3 inches or taller is extremely important for the health of the lawn to watch more videos about lawn care tips please visit Organo lawn calm you