Mowing Warm Weather Perennial Grasses Short for Weed Control

When we moved in to our house, the yard had been neglected for quite a while.

I could tell it once had thriving centipede grass growing, but it was being smothered by weeds.

Partly because I don't like to spend money unless absolutely necessary, I decided to see if I could rejuvenate it without reseeding it.

Growing up, we had always cut the grass high with annual grasses, so as not to kill it.

After thinking a while about this grass being a perennial and its low growing, spreading nature, I decided to cut it as short as possible without damaging it.

The results were slow at first, but especially during our hot, dry summer, cutting the weeds short was killing them, and the grass could keep growing for a while longer and would go dormant if we had a really dry spell.

After a good thunderstorm the grass would burst into growing again and spread!

Now the centipede has almost completely choked out the weeds except in a few spots with other really aggressive grasses! It's almost spreading too much now, trying to get into the natural areas.

Has anyone else had a similar success story?

What type of grass do you have, and are you able to manage it without using any additives?

This is very interesting as a contrast to Paul's article dealing with the cooler climate grasses. Frequent mowing with high cuts is the premise there.  It seems like both rely on the grass being better able to cope with frequent mowing/grazing better than most plants
I will say, using his technique with similar species to yours has my grass staying green even during dry spells, but I haven't been consistent enough with the mowing to beat back the weeds.  The grass is very slowly choking them out, though.

Casie Becker wrote:This is very interesting as a contrast to Paul's article dealing with the cooler climate grasses. Frequent mowing with high cuts is the premise there.  It seems like both rely on the grass being better able to cope with frequent mowing/grazing better than most plants.

That's a good point Cassie about the grasses being able to recover quicker from being cut than most other plants.

I'll put a link to Paul's thread organic lawn care for the cheap and lazy, there's so much good stuff there.

Casie Becker wrote: I will say, using his technique with similar species to yours has my grass staying green even during dry spells, but I haven't been consistent enough with the mowing to beat back the weeds.  The grass is very slowly choking them out, though.

Based on that, I'm going to try a combination of the two this year, cutting it often and short early in the season to hopefully knock out the weeds, and then letting it grow more during the hot summer to stay green and and growing to hopefully keep choking out the weeds!