To mow or not to mow: What to do with no mow May lawn now it's nearly July

[PaperBlinds]

We didn't mow in May, nor this month, mainly to see what would happen, apart from a path down the middle. Lawn is now over a foot tall and we have clover ☘️. The grass is all in seed and looks lovely, but what next? With hot and drought coming should we cut it back (i need a scythe!) or let it go over, set seed and dry out?

it's somewhere between unkempt and a grass meadow. I was aiming at the first image but it looks more like the second.

@MereDintofPandiculation that's a full tutorial - thank you! I am not on Facebook, but always take the chance to get a new collins type ID book!

Try the Stephen Rose one. Or anything from Field Srudices Council. Dominic Price has a good booklet covering the most common grasses. Hubbard is the classic, but they keys are dreadful to follow. Stace is a possibility but quite technical and no pictures of course.

Facebook with no friends and all your privacy battened down is an incredibly useful tool for botanical identification. The names you see on there are the ones you see on the covers of the most technical id guides. Have a google of "Tim Rich" for example. No way could I get access to advice from people like that without Facebook, much as I hate it.

@RobertsRadio please post a review of no nettles when you've read it!

Ok, will do.

MereDint couldn't agree more. The Wildflowers fb group I am a member of is basically a live identification community of experts. It's a fantastic learning place.

I agree about FB being brilliant for this sort of thing, I follow lots of local and national nature pages and groups and have learnt so much.

Wild flowers of Britain and Ireland? With Marian Davidson, Richard Mabbett, Rob Large, Mike Crewe, Dawn Nelson etc?

meredint yes that's the one. Most knowledgeable group on facebook, better than a consultancy and field studies council training plus I can pretend that I'm using facebook for research instead of watching any old crap.

Just out of interest has anyone here used a long handled scythe to cut their grass instead of a mower or strimmer. I love the idea, but wondering how practical it is and how well it cuts the grass.

I would urge you to cut.I did this a few years ago and it became so over grown I had to get professionals in to cut it back,so much was growing in there, it was impossible to see what you were cutting Ie was there stones or acorns In there, or small animals, toads, hedgehogs, baby animals. Plus you needed full protective clothing due to ticks etc.

you need to keep,on top of it I’m afraid. It also seldom looks lovely and often just an unkempt mess.

It works, isn’t much slower than a strimmer and is a lot quieter. But ideally you need a grass cutting scythe, which has a much longer blade than a general purpose scythe. A scythe slices, drawing the whole length of the blade across the stem, rather than chops, so something as flexible as grass needs a long blade. You can do it with a general purpose one, but you’ll find grass much harder to cut than, eg, nettles, brambles, Prunus suckers.

I use a scythe because it’s less faff than getting a strimmer out, and you need less protective gear.

it is worth looking for a 1-day course. Gives a lot of confidence.

Two tips:

1. keep your scythe blade on the ground. Take it in a 180 degree sweep, but make sure it stays flat on the ground
2. if you suddenly feel you’ve lost your knack, sharpen your blade.