Easily Control Weeds With Lawn Mowing

Controlling Weeds By Mowing Lawns

Many weeds can be controlled over the long term life of a lawn by regular lawn mowing. The process is a simple one, which is to keep regularly removing weed seeds before they get a chance to mature, separate from their mother plant, and plant themselves into the soil and lawn to mature in the coming years as new weeds.

How Many Weeds Spread

Many weed varieties spread solely via their seed, while others can spread via underground runners or bulbs. The seeds on the seed heads usually sit on top of stalks, and it's these seeds and these weeds which can be most easily controlled with regular lawn mowing.

Each of the weed types which have seed heads on top of stalks will take several weeks to fully mature. Starting with a bud and continually growing it's stalk and eventually flowering at it's tip. The flower will sit for a short period of time and eventually mature into seed heads.

Mowing Lawns To Remove Weed Seeds

By mowing our lawns regularly, we can keep regularly removing the stalks and flowers before they get a chance to mature into seed heads. However, each time we cut off a stalk the weed will attempt to grow a new stalk and see head, so the regular mowing simply continues to remove the stalks and flowers as they continue to grow.

As most weeds of this type are annuals, they only have a single season to live, mature and re-seed themselves. Through regular lawn mowing we can completely remove the entire season of weed seed from being deposited into our lawns to mature in the coming years as new weeds.

Ongoing Weed Control

While we can easily stop an entire new generation of weed seeds from being deposited into our lawns and soils from regular lawn mowing, we must also remember that most weed seeds can stay in the soil for many years. For this reason we must expect that we will still be dealing with weeds for a few years to come as the weed seed bank exhausts itself.

By following a good lawn mowing routine throughout all seasons, and especially Winter we can easily control weeds over the long term life of our lawns.

Not All Weeds Can Be Controlled With Mowing

As a final note on this article, many weeds cannot be controlled via this lawn mowing method, weeds such as Mullumbimby Couch spread with underground runners, and weeds like Bindii grow their seeds very low to the ground and below mowing heights. Also if weed seeds are left to fully mature, lawn mowing will not remove all these seeds, as many of them will not be collected by the lawn mower, and instead only be disturbed to plant themselves into another area of the lawn.