Stop!
Lawn scalping refers to cutting your grass down to soil level, literally leaving a dark scalp in your lawn. It can happen, even if you’re well trained. But if it happens to you, you must stop mowing! Immediately; before it gets out of hand. Which is exactly what happened a few months ago.
The lawn was gently sloping down from the walkway and placing one wheel on the sidewalk edge would normally be fine. Except the edge had recently been replaced with new sod and this gently raised the lawn level.
An experienced landscaper would raise the deck level to correct for the slightly higher lawn. Unfortunately, the worker that day wasn’t experienced. So he did what he always does: he placed his mower on the edge of the sidewalk and pushed on.
Oops!
When his mower started leaving dark scalp spots in the lawn he just kept going, leaving a damaged area at least ten metres long. As soon as you see a hint of scalping, you must stop to make corrections. Remember, your job is to leave the lawn looking beautiful, green and cut properly; not covered in black scalps that will take months to green up.
Now, as the manager on site, it was my job to ask what he was doing. Why not stop as soon as you see a problem? The dude’s answer blew me away! He told me that he had scalped the same lawn last week and nobody said anything! Jesus! Where was the crew foreman?
Why scalps are bad
Most new landscapers are trained to use mowers safely but they aren’t told why scalps are bad.
Lawn scalps look awful. They also take forever to green up because grass blades grow from meristems (growth points) located in the lower third of every grass blade. When you cut below the meristem, growth stops. The only way the scalp will regreen is by grass blades sending roots over from surrounding turf. And this takes time. Same with over seeding.
Conclusion
Scalping a lawn is the worst thing you can do to it, especially when you do it on the last cut of the season in late October. Remember, we try to provide great lawn care service and that means lush green lawns. Scalps ruin the presentation, sometimes for months.
Now, in the example above we got lucky because the scalp happened on a piece of new sod. The grass around the scalps pushed up nicely and obscured the damage.
When you encounter problems while mowing, stop immediately and make corrections. Creating a long scalp as if everything is fine, isn’t fine. It’s horrific.
