People in just about any industry will get asked “how often should I…” questions. To your doctor, you might ask, “How often should I go for a 10-mile run?” To your mechanic, you might ask, “How often should I change out my tires?” To your 10-year-old, you might ask, “How often should I restart my computer?”
Because we at Autmow are genius experts in all fields, we actually know that the answer to all these questions is the same: it depends.
OK, so maybe we aren’t experts in all fields, but we know that things often do depend on the context. How often you change your tires depends on what kind of tires you have, for example.
For us at Autmow, a common question we get is “How often should I have my robot mower cutting the grass?” And of course our answer is…(say it with us)…it depends.
As a general rule, you will want to run your autonomous mower every day or every other day, and we will explain why below. However, there are some factors that may mean that a different timeline is better for you.
We will explain all of this in further detail in this article. By the end, you should have a very good sense of how often your robot mower should be running.
Factors to consider when deciding how often to mow with your robot mower
When we say, “It depends,” there is a natural follow-up: “Depends on what?” Well, here are a few factors that will help you determine how often you should run your robotic mower.
Type of grass: As Mower Direct points out, you really want to think about how quickly and how thickly your lawn grows. You can get away with cutting a thinner grass, like Kentucky bluegrass, less often. A thicker grass, like Bermuda grasses, needs to be cut more frequently.
Weather conditions: If your area is under a dry spell, you can afford to hold off running your robot mower. In fact, you probably want to. If the grass gets too short during these times, it loses moisture and turns brown and crunchy. When we are talking about marshmallows over a campfire, brown and crunchy is great, but with grass? Definitely not what we want.
Seasonal changes: Similarly, the time of year changes the need for more frequent mowing. No matter what region you are in, the heart of summer usually requires less frequent mowing, especially if it’s dry. However, the grass grows most quickly in the spring and needs the most mowing then. In the fall, you can slow down a bit as the grass prepares for a more dormant pattern in the winter. And of course, in the winter, you need no mowing in the northern half of the U.S. In the South, you can mow much more infrequently than any other season.
Lawn size: If you have a larger area to mow, you want to mow more often, especially at first. When you first have a robot mower going over your lawn, it likely will not know the most efficient pattern to mow right away (some models actually never really mow in a pattern, always just moving randomly across the area.) If the robot mower is going every day, it’s okay if it misses a patch; the grass will likely get cut the next day anyway. But if you are waiting several days between running the autonomous mower, a missed patch could get pretty long. Similarly, a robot mower may not finish a large lawn before needing to recharge.
Type of robotic mower: Battery life, cutting depth, and mowing patterns vary, at least to some extent. Knowing these specifications can help you determine how often your robotic lawn mower should mow.
How often should a robotic mower mow?
So yes, there are many factors that influence how often your robotic lawn mower should mow. But we are not trying to answer a question with a question. We aren’t Socrates, after all.
We do have an answer to the question of how often a robot mower should mow. As a general rule, your robotic lawn mower should mow every day or every other day.
The German Lawn Society has done research on what frequency of robotic mowing produces the best results and has found that daily mowing is the best, with every other day just behind. These two frequencies are by far better than any other option.
Why is frequent mowing so effective? Basically, it’s because of how a robot mower cuts the grass. First, as mentioned above, a robotic lawn mower may not always hit every inch of your lawn every time (though a model with GPS does a better job of this). So, if you wait too long between mows, the grass will become long.
Part of the reason longer grass is a concern is because the robot mower is only designed to cut off the tips of grass blades. There is no way to bag clippings, so if the grass is long, it will become matted on the lawn, which ruins the mulching function.
That said, you do want to be careful to ensure that you have your blades set at a proper level. If you mow too short every day, you can definitely hurt your lawn. For most lawns, a length of 2 inches is good to maintain, and you want to mow when the grass hits 3 inches.
How long should a robotic mower mow?
Of course, whether or not you can take any days off between mowing partially depends on your mower’s capacity. If you know that your robotic mower is hitting all of your grass each time, you can better afford a day off between robomows, especially during a dry spell in the middle of summer.
Part of your mower’s specs will discuss an area capacity. This number will show how much area a mower can cover in a day. So, if your mower has a maximum area capacity of 1 acre, but you have ½ acre that needs mowing, you should run the mower for 12 hours a day in order to hit every blade. At least, you should run it for 12 hours in theory. However, in practice, things like hills or tricky obstacles can make the robotic mower not run ideally (much like eating 3 chili cheese dogs sometimes makes us not run ideally). So you may just have to try the robot mower on your property to get the best sense of how long you need.
Your Robotic Mower Already Knows How Often to Mow
We wrote this article so you know whether your mower is holding up its side of the bargain. But for the most part, you won’t even have to think about it. You’ll be eating breakfast or grabbing the mail and you’ll notice the little guy out there, mowing away. That’s because many models of robotic mowers come with their own weather sensors so they know when and how often to mow. This blog article is just to make sure we humans know what’s up, because the robots already do.
Maintenance tips for robotic mowers
One final robot lawn mower hack is one that may seem self-explanatory but that too many owners forget. You need to take care of your mower. Otherwise, no matter the frequency and duration of your mowing, the lawn won’t look great. For that matter, the autonomous mower will struggle to maintain the kind of regular mowing schedule you need without proper maintenance.
Be sure to clean your robotic mower regularly, sharpen the blades every six months, and keep tabs on the battery life. Doing so will help your robotic mower run frequently, just as it is intended.
Autmow is here to assist
OK, we totally get that we threw a ton of information at you right now. We love robotic lawn mowers, and our lives revolve around them. Yours probably doesn’t. Despite our article, you may still be puzzling over the best schedule for your lawn the way we puzzle over how the heck someone could think the toilet paper should go under the holder.
If you are wondering how often your robotic lawn mower should mow your lawn, contact Autmow today. We will be happy to walk you through how to determine what is best for your situation. We can even come out and help you program your mower.
Just don’t ask us how to avoid those chili cheese dogs. We still haven’t figured that out.