btw, I'm in the northeast US in Zone 6.

I see less and less of that now lately. In the past few years many of our local lawn care folks have raised their mower heights. Not my next door neighbor but many others.

@dchall: perhaps you should introduce your neighbor to the lawn care forum at GW. :)

@Lawn Hobby: Perhaps for the homeowners it is simply a lack of knowledge or understanding for the proper care of turfgrass. For the contractors, I suspect it is a case of get it done, and get to the next job.....more jobs completed equals more money. For me, I would be more interested in having people recommend my services based on the high quality of my work (there would be no scalping).

Well, dchall, I've been thinking about it lately, because I'm in process of lowering my own mowing height in preparation for overseeding. Now, whether I will go quite as low as these scalped lawns, I am not certain. I may have to in order to prevent the existing grass from shading out the new grass, causing fungus, etc. but I keep reminding myself that the loss will be temporary, and it will be denser in the future due to the new grass taking hold.

Actually, it was kind of cool when my own backyard got scalped by a substitute mower and the grass that was there (planted last year) didn't fair too well after. It's cool because A.) It got stunted while I was super busy and didn't have time to mow it every week anyway. And B.) I will now have a much easier time overseeding with a different type fo grass...it's so thin now. The only adverse effect was that there are now lots of weeds that I have had to spray, and I'm not a big fan of the chemicals.

nearandwest: I assume it's a combination of, like you say, homeowners not knowing better, homeowners thinking that's the way it supposed to be mowed, and also maybe the rampant use of riding mowers (All those John Deere commercials...I admit it, I wear a John Deere baseball cap myself.)

I mowed my lawn for the second time this summer yesterday. My neighbor who is a dilligent lawn scalper came over last night to ask if I planned to mow. In our heat and drought I just don't understand the need to mow at such low heights. My lawn greened back up after a long awaited rain storm. The scalped lawns have not. I think some folks equal a longer lawn with a lack of maintenance no matter the outcome.

In the south people are telling me they keep their bermuda at 3-4 inches during the heat. On here everyone says keep it short ~1", so a lot of it is probably just people doing what they think is best... plus I used to cut really low just because it usually meant more time in between mowings, but that was before I started getting into this stuff!

I find that when the lawns stop growing and go dormant in the summer the hired lawn mowers will mow it shorter and shorter each week so they can get paid. I just mow when it needs it and can take a break for a couple weeks!

Actually a lot of people earnestly believe that cutting lawns short can avert disease. If done in the fall this can do exactly that...but at this time cutting the grass as low as near to scalping will hurt the root structure and will not encourage retention of moisture and add to that the heat of the sun will certainly dry the roots quickly.