I spent the first two summers after laying my Sir Walter mowing it at 25mm. Nice and short. Looked like a bowling green for about three days, then it'd go yellow, thin out, and look worse than before I mowed it.

Took me longer than I'd like to admit to figure out what I was doing wrong.

The problem with mowing Buffalo short

Buffalo grass (Sir Walter, Palmetto, Sapphire, all of them) grows differently to Couch or Kikuyu. The runners sit above the soil, not below it. When you mow at 25mm, you're not just cutting leaf blade. You're slicing into the stolons themselves.

Every time I scalped it, I was basically wounding the plant. Then the Ipswich sun would bake those exposed runners on the clay, and the lawn would spend the next two weeks trying to recover instead of growing.

Here's what I didn't understand at the time: Buffalo stores energy in its leaf blade. Cut it too short and you're removing the plant's solar panels. It can't photosynthesise, can't feed the roots, can't fight off disease.

What I do now

I mow at 50-60mm depending on the season.

The EGO handles 50-60mm without any issues. I keep the blade sharp, new blade or sharpen every 20-25 hours. A dull blade tears the leaf instead of cutting it, and torn Buffalo tips go brown within a day or two.

The one-third rule

This is the thing that actually changed everything for me. Never remove more than one-third of the leaf blade in a single mow.

If your Buffalo is at 75mm and you want it at 50mm, don't do it in one hit. Bring it to 60mm, wait a few days, then take it to 50mm. Two passes, one week apart.

I used to ignore this and wonder why the lawn looked stressed after every mow. Turns out I was just being impatient.

What about the edges?

IDECH ASK-V23 rotary scissors edging Sir Walter Buffalo along the footpath

I run the IDECH rotary scissors along the edges instead of a string trimmer. No debris throw means I'm not peppering the car or the windows, and it gives a cleaner cut on Buffalo than line does. Line tends to shred the leaf rather than cut it.

IDECH ASK-V23 mounted on Milwaukee M18 FUEL power head

I've since upgraded to an EGO power head and fitted the Milwaukee extension pole with the IDECH on the end. Best of both worlds. More grunt, and the extension pole means I'm not bending over for the long footpath runs.

I only edge every second mow because Buffalo doesn't grow that aggressively laterally compared to Kikuyu.

The result

Sir Walter Buffalo footpath strip, dense and healthy at 50-60mm mowing height

Since I raised the height, the lawn is thicker, greener, and handles heat stress way better. I went from watering every second day in summer to twice a week. The root system is deeper because the plant actually has enough leaf to sustain it.

Funny thing is, the neighbours think the lawn looks better now than when I was cutting it short. Turns out a dense, healthy lawn at 60mm looks better than a stressed, patchy lawn at 25mm. Who knew.

What I'd do differently

If I was starting again, I'd never go below 50mm for a regular mow. The only exception is a renovation scalp, and even then I'd only take it to 30-35mm and immediately follow up with Impala (60mL/100m²) to protect the exposed stolons from fungal attack.

If you're south of the border (Melbourne, Adelaide, Tassie) your Buffalo will be a bit more forgiving on height because the UV isn't as savage. But I'd still keep it at 45mm minimum.

I built LawnSuite because I got sick of juggling spreadsheets, weather apps, and scribbled notes. It pulls BOM weather, soil test results, and treatment history into one place so I can see what my lawn needs without guessing. It even treats the soil like a battery, tracking how much water gets depleted between rain events and telling me exactly how long to run the hose. If you're interested, join the beta. See the full feature list.

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