The first cut of the year: when and how high
High, dry and light. The first cut sets up the season, and the two ways people ruin it are going too early and taking far too much off.
Published 23 February 2026 ·Last reviewed 20 August 2026
The first cut sets up the whole season, and it is the one most often rushed — usually on the first warm Saturday, which is rarely the right day.
When
Two conditions, both of which have to hold.
The grass is growing. Cool-season grass resumes growth as soil temperature climbs through about 5°C and the days lengthen. If it has not visibly grown, it does not need cutting, and cutting it takes leaf area away from a plant that is trying to rebuild its reserves.
The ground will take a mower. This is usually the binding constraint in spring, and the one people ignore. Soil that has been wet all winter deforms under load rather than springing back. A mower on it leaves wheel marks that can take the whole season to grow out; a ride-on leaves ruts you have to level.
The ground being firm enough is not the same as the grass being dry. The leaves dry in hours; the soil profile takes days or weeks to drain after a wet winter.
So the ideal first cut is not the first warm day. It is the first day that is dry and follows a dry-ish spell, with the grass actually growing.
How high
High. Higher than you think, and higher than you intend to keep it.
Through winter the plant has been running on limited light. Its root system is at its annual low and its reserves are depleted. Leaf area is how it rebuilds both. Removing most of it in one pass forces the plant to spend reserves it does not have regrowing leaf, at the expense of root.
Set the mower near its highest setting for the first cut — around 5cm is a reasonable target — then come down gradually over the following weeks, a notch at a time, until you reach your summer height.
The one-third rule
Never remove more than about a third of the leaf blade in a single cut. It applies all year and matters most now.
If the lawn has got away from you over a mild winter and is at 10cm, do not cut straight to 5cm. Take it to 7cm, wait three or four days, then take it to 5cm. Two passes and a week is a much smaller shock than one hard cut.
This is also why frequency beats height adjustment: cutting little and often keeps you inside the rule automatically.
Sharpen the blade first
A winter in the shed does nothing good for a mower blade, and the first cut is often through slightly damp, soft growth that a blunt blade will tear rather than cut. A torn tip browns off within a few days, which is why some lawns look worse a week after their first cut.
Sharpen it, or have it sharpened, before the first cut rather than in June when you finally notice.
What not to do at the same time
The first cut is not the moment for everything else. In particular:
- Do not scarify yet. It is a serious intervention and the lawn needs to be growing strongly to recover.
- Do not feed a lawn that is not growing. Nitrogen applied to dormant grass is mostly wasted and some of it leaches.
- Do not roll it. Rolling a wet lawn compacts it, and compaction is a much harder problem to fix than a bumpy surface.
Cut it high, cut it light, and leave the rest until the grass is properly moving.
Check whether the ground will take a mower yet — ground firmness is scored from a fortnight of rainfall, not just today’s weather.