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Comment by happytoexplain | Hacker News Reader

Maybe I have slow growing grass. I mow every three weeks, and I feel like my neighbors do it every two. I thought weekly mowing was something mostly only seen in fictional portrayals of American fathers.

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Here in suburban Australia, in my street anyway, there's several households that do it multiple times a week. My neighbour mows every other day. I had a neighbour in another place who was on his ride on mower every afternoon at 5pm. There isn't a daylight hour of the weekends where you can't hear a mower or whipper snipper (weed whacker in American) in the vicinity. I've really grown to hate lawns.

How hot is it there and how much does it rain? I grew up in Idaho, where in the summer it'd get to 42-44C relatively regularly. And there was at most 200mm of precipitation a year. Most of the grass in my parents' neighborhood was Kentucky Bluegrass. Mowing the lawn weekly was something that happened to help a bit with water retention.

My dad always insisted on mowing every 4 days though.

I don't know about op but keep in mind it's a big country. Very close in size to continental USA. With as much climate variation.

Sydney for example has a higher annual rainfall than places that Americans consider rainy (eg. Seattle). Combine that with warmer temperatures and in many parts of Australia you are fighting a potential jungle more than fighting desertification.

Canberra, the capital, on the other hand regularly gets below freezing which means less mowing required.

> higher annual rainfall than places that Americans consider rainy (eg. Seattle)

a surprising amount of the US gets more rainfall than Seattle

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-17/this-simp...

Looking at that map, there are very few places that rain as often as Seattle. Most of the US that gets more precipitation, gets it in large downpours (thunderstorms).

Where I live is subtropical, and there are times in summer where the grass seems to grow tall overnight. For the rest of the year you can get away with mowing every two or three weeks to keep it under control. It's the striving for constant perfection that bothers me, instead of just waiting till it needs to be cut. I know these people probably enjoy it and have a lot of pride in a manicured lawn. I just want to live somewhere with less of them around.

I cant really call Brisbane subtropical, Townsville is brownsville, so this means cairns, darwin, weipa or charters.

It depends on your climate and grass. In MA (where this study was), many cool season grasses can grow well over an inch per week in the mid-May and late-September windows. (Turf type tall fescue can grow over two inches per week in those windows.)

Yeah. I have a biweekly mowing service in MA. It's barely adequate in late spring (and especially if they get behind because it's been rainy) and it's probably more frequent than needed during a dry late summer.

Our cool season grass grows pretty fast and weekly is best. Plus it is better for the lawn to cut more frequently as it stresses the grass less.

There are a lot of things you can do to help bee populations. I can't imagine how you mow the lawn is that large of a factor considering the other things you can do.

Yeah, weirdly, here in the Canadian “frozen tundra” West of Alberta, there’s about 2-3 months where my grass goes into overdrive and I have to mow it once a week.

Seriously considering landscaping to not need to do this. Wife and I have thought to turn the whole front and back yard into other greenery.

Other do better at hosting butterfly caterpillars, bees, etc, which helps feed birds and other wildlife, so I think that’s a great idea that everyone should consider.

Agreed, I want my yard to contribute to the ecosystem instead of contributing to my “status” in suburbia.

Nice! We're looking at doing that too. This is a cool site for figuring out what to plant: https://www.nwf.org/NativePlantFinder/Plants - ranked by number of butterfly species they can host.

Very cool! I’ll have to finagle it a bit since it only takes zip codes, but this is super helpful!

If this year is anything like last year, I'll have to mow twice a week in the spring and then once a month in the summer. I mow at the second highest deck height though.

My yard is a mix of shade, part shade and full sun. Different areas of the lawn grow at different rates, but some definitely need to be cut more than once a week during the worst of the year to avoid constantly clogging up the mowing deck.

Bear in mind this is a 5 acre lot that is 4/5 forest or water- definitely not a stereotypical suburban uniform green carpet. No pesticides or fertilizers used at all either.

In Austin Texas. I mow weekly during the growing season. We previously had lawn service and it was every 2 weeks. Once lockdowns happened I took this over. Mainly out of habit and a need to get some exercise, so it’s every Saturday morning. I have kids so maybe there is some correlation :)

Could be they're putting down nitrogen. My lawn grows much faster if I throw down some nitrogen a couple times a year. As a bonus, happy grass crowds out most of the more obnoxious weeds (looking at you, quack grass).

Depends on how much water you get. During wet times of the summer, if you didn't mow at least once a week the mower would just clog up the next time you tried because the grass gets so thick so fast.

Perhaps they're fertilizing and you're not.

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