As the days warm and showers of rain continue to sweep across the ACT, the nagging, vexing question for home owners is: should I mow it while wet, or leave it?
It's a seasonal, first-world discussion which firmly divides the horticultural community but Jason Dillon, who has been mowing lawns commercially with Canberra Landscape Management Services for 23 years, is firmly in the "just do it" camp.
But he says the trick in this changeable weather is to mow regularly even if it's wet - every week - and go lightly on a high setting when you do.
And make sure your mower's cutting blades are sharp.
"It's a tough one because you are damned if you do, and damned if you don't [mow]," Mr Dillon said.
"Mowing wet grass is awful; it's messy, it's slow, it's hard on equipment, it throws clumps of grass onto your walkways and lawn, and you get this awful thatchy appearance.
"But the more regularly you mow - I would suggest every week at this time of year - the easier it gets because the more you do it during these periods of rapid growth, then you find you are taking off the most recent growth and that's actually good for your lawn."
A third season of La Nina has created grass growth conditions that he hasn't seen in all his years of commercial landscaping - and it's set to continue for months, right through summer.
Far beyond the next 10 days of intermittent showers, forecasters are expecting the current prevailing weather patterns to roll on through to January and early February.
But if and when the La Nina needle shifts, thousands of backyards across Canberra will still need a regular mow.
"Even after this weather pattern moves on, the subsoil is so wet now that all the nutrients and dampness that the grass needs - together with the warmer weather - will just keep the growth going," Mr Dillon said.
He said that he had visited several large sites around Canberra in the past few days that he had mowed for customers just over a week ago and couldn't tell where he had been.
"I'm looking at the height of this grass and thinking: Did I really mow this a week ago or am I mistaken?," he said.
"But I had mowed it; it's just that we have this phenomenal growth happening at the moment and it didn't appear that way at all."
In response to the recent wet weather, the ACT government has set up a "rapid response" mowing team trial which will have more capacity to respond to urgent mowing priorities across the city.
Ten new staff across three teams will be added in addition to our existing mowing capacity. This one-year pilot will test the rapid response model for possible future expansion.
This follows an additional $1.2 million invested for surge mowing during the previous wet year.
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