Endless rain - yard overgrown

[Anonymous]

This is our first yard. It’s been wet and rainy for like every weekend for a month, and even most weekdays. Is there a way to trim and cut the weeds and grass even when all wet??

[Anonymous]

It's best not to mow a wet lawn if you can avoid it. But if you must, you want to go very slowly and be very careful to avoid slipping. And wear work boots.

[Anonymous]

This is how I ended up with a lawn care company. Between having a kid, working all week, and dealing with weather, I just gave up on the mowing part at least. In fact at lunch today, I tried to get myself to go weed, but of course it started to rain.

[Anonymous]

Don’t worry. It’s going to get into the 90s with no rain.

[Anonymous]

What are your neighbors doing? If you live somewhere that has had literally nonstop rain, then everyone's yard will be overgrown, and you're in the clear. If everyone else's lawn looks nice, then it's obviously not as wet as all that.

I live in DC, and I've had no problem finding time outside of work hours when it hasn't rained for the past 12 hours.

[Anonymous]

Mowing when the grass is wet and the ground is soaked will likely cause muddy ruts (if your lawnmower is heavy). You may also run into grass clogging your mower because it will stick to the undercarriage.

[Anonymous]

Either hire a company to do it, or you just have to jump on the chance to mow whenever you can, even if it’s not convenient.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What are your neighbors doing? If you live somewhere that has had literally nonstop rain, then everyone's yard will be overgrown, and you're in the clear. If everyone else's lawn looks nice, then it's obviously not as wet as all that.

I live in DC, and I've had no problem finding time outside of work hours when it hasn't rained for the past 12 hours.

This is key. No need to wait for a whole day of sunny weather to mow. After a light rain, wait long enough that the grass and the top of the soil is dry. Today has been heavy, but many of the recent rainy days have been light enough that it has been possible to mow in between showers.

[Anonymous]

you can always find "dry" time to mow. i've been mowing for 27 years and had no trouble finding time. may not be the most convenient time, but, nevertheless, you can find it.

[Anonymous]

It gets mowed when dry. That's all. I am not hiring someone to do a job I can do (eventually).

We're in an expensive part of Bethesda and my yard looks like the lush, sustainable, pollinator heaven that it is... the nicest way to describe it. Luckily my neighbors are all crunchy granola types and don't mind. Or maybe they've given up on me. Either way they're very nice about it.

[Anonymous]

Let the lawn go. If you are going to hire a service, have them help you turn your lawn into a garden. All of our children will thank you, or they should. You can do a little weeding even when it is too wet to mow. Eventually, your garden won't have room for many weeds.

[Anonymous]

The anti-grass zealots are a bit extreme. We have a farm with 50 acres of fields that get cut once or twice a year. We have trails through the fields that get mowed several times a year.

1. You pretty much have to have a maintained “grassy” area if you want an area that kids can play on. That doesn’t mean you need to aerate and overseed all the time or ensure there’s not a single dandelion. The “lawn” part of our property is mostly weeds and grasses that get cut every other week. By this time of the year it’s mostly grass and clover.

2. Frequent mowing is important to control invasives. Because of mismanagement by a tenant farmer, we will probably need to do a controlled burn or a deep till one day to eliminate Russian olive, Japanese stiltgrass, johnson grass and so many others.

3. Maintaining wildflower and grass meadows is really a lot of work. It’s glamorized on instagram but we maybe have a half acre of this and we pay someone to work on it for a lot of hours.

The path of least resistance is to mow. And, for 80-100 bucks a cut for a half acre lot (for our other house), for me it’s time spent because I can spend that time doing some other task that would be more costly to hire out.

As for the question at hand, you just let it dry out. By Saturday afternoon unless you have drainage problems in your lawn, it should be firm enough for a riding lawnmower. Depending on how much rain you get today or tomorrow, you should be able to use a push mower by tomorrow afternoon. The big thing is just avoid morning dew because as others have said wet grass clogs the mower.

[Anonymous]

Look at the bright side. Everything is lush and green unlike last summer when we had a drought. Loving the rain after last year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is our first yard. It’s been wet and rainy for like every weekend for a month, and even most weekdays. Is there a way to trim and cut the weeds and grass even when all wet??

You better get after it before you ruin your lawn. Once it's overgrown, you will damage the grass and lose a lot of it due to shock to the plants. You should never cut more than 25% of the blade length off grass at a time. Talking traditional lawn grass. Hay production is obviously different grass.

You can mow it within a few hours after a rain, just don't want it full of water on the blades of grass since it will clog the mower fast. DO NOT use any mulching attachments that block the flow of exit debris. Let it form rows of cut grass debris and rake them up if you waited too long and have them.

[Anonymous]

Everyone in the DCUM area uses a lawn care company. At least where I live in Potomac off Congressional.