It's A Trap.

No, seriously. It's a trap. If you had known it'd be another lawn care post, I probably couldn't get you here to read this. I lured you here with a memetastic title and opened with jovial language so you'll probably at least skim my post. Ahhhh. Kadie wants pageviews.

I came up with this post topic yesterday at work while cleaning up a month's (or more) worth of shoddy, negligent string trimming on the part of my coworkers. I'm talking about long, shaggy grass on the edges of the lawns. Granted, you'll save yourself a little time while grooming your lawn, but honestly, you aren't doing your lawn any favors by not trimming it....every time.

I also recommend you trim your lawn wherever the grass ends. It could be on a walkway, patio, bark, installed edging....gravel....busy highway.... When you trim a swell bevel cut around your whole lawn, you'll not only make it look like a delightfully verdant pillow, but the trim is absolutely required to complete the look. Even a not-so-verdant lawn looks more classy with a beveled perimeter (assuming there's grass there to trim...). A bevel is almost always popped into your lawn by the professional grass groomer, and offers a clean, manicured look to your little patch of green.

You may notice that after not trimming your grass for a while, the trim will be all yellowy and sparse. It's because your grass isn't trained to be short. Yes, grass can be trained to be green and short at the same time. After training your grass to keep a shorter crop, it will be less unruly between mows and not leave a Yellow Brick Road perimeter when you trim again. Yikes.

Heee! I made a comic.

Grass training... Haaa. But really. Let's delve into a delightful bit of history... the evolution of grass!
 Briefly... Grasslands as we know them evolved alongside grazing mammals in an evolutionary arms race. Browsing animals began to develop hypsodont teeth (continuously growing teeth...that's why horses need their teeth filed down sometimes) in response to the development of phytoliths (tiny silica spikes on the leaves of grass...the reason you get grass cuts. They also cause the teeth of grazing animals to be worn down) in response to the animals eating the plant. Isn't evolution great? Anyway, what this means is that grass evolved to be mowed. The root systems even support constant grazing. Lawn mowers these days serve as "artificial grazers", keeping your grass healthy and living up to its evolutionary worth.

Since grass supports being "grazed", your lawn will continue to thrive even when cropped shorter--like when you bevel your trims... Again, you aren't doing it any favors when you neglect to mow and trim.

There are, however, exceptions to the "trim it every time" thing I do at work.
*When the grass is too dry to grow, let alone be green, feel free to give it a break... and some water.
*When you are just starting to train your grass (though this isn't a great time of year to try to train your grass), it'll be sparse and yellowy. Trim it every other week to allow it time to recuperate and put out runners from its rhizomes. This will thicken up the trim and allow it to be green when short (think: more grass than dirt).

When starting to train your grass, give it plenty of water and if you haven't fertilized lately, use a mild, balanced summer mix to your lawn (we used 19-19-19 as a summer ratio). I would certainly recommend starting to train your grass much earlier in the summer/late spring when it's not so gosh darn hot.

Enjoy your pro-style lawn. Trap ya later. :)