[Llano Estacado]

Wanting to have a good understanding on proper HOC adjustment. When it is spoken of here is it typicaly speaking of the setting of the mower? Or is it speaking of the actual height of the bermuda? Is there a accepted practice of measuring the height of bermuda? From tip of the blade to the thatch layer or to soil?

Hope these questions make sense.

 

[g-man]

When we say hoc, most of us refer to the bench hoc. This is the distance between the roller and the reel/knife or the distance of the blades to the concrete (rotary mower).

There is also the actual hoc, which has multiple sources of variability (thatch, soil moisture, soil structure, etc). There is a proper tool to measure it with a proper price: http://www.forestry-suppliers.com/product_pages/products.php?mi=43221&itemnum=13325&redir=Y.

 

[Mightyquinn]

When we say hoc, most of us refer to the bench hoc. This is the distance between the roller and the reel/knife or the distance of the blades to the concrete (rotary mower).

There is also the actual hoc, which has multiple sources of variability (thatch, soil moisture, soil structure, etc). There is a proper tool to measure it with a proper price: http://www.forestry-suppliers.com/product_pages/products.php?mi=43221&itemnum=13325&redir=Y.

I have a Prism Gauge like the one in the link posted above and you would be surprised at the difference in HOC between Bench and Actual depending on the condition of your lawn. From my experience, once you get above 1"-1.5" with your lawn, the bench vs Actual HOC starts to become a moot point since you are maintaining your lawn at a higher HOC mainly with a rotary.

When mowing with a reel mower at or below 3/4" is when it really starts to come into play. I can only speak for bermuda since that is what I have in my lawn but if you have a good amount of thatch or even a mat layer, it can affect your actual HOC by 1/4". When I first got my Baroness and started mowing my lawn with it, I had the bench HOC set at .300" but the actual HOC was more around .450" since the mower was riding on top of a "mat" layer that the bermuda tends to create when mowed low with minimal dethatching. Last year I did an aggressive dethatching in the Spring which helped a lot in keeping my bench HOC very close to the actual HOC.

I know we have all read about the opposite effect happening when mowing with a greens mower, where your actual HOC is LOWER then the bench HOC due to the fact of the weight of the mower sinking in to the soil and cutting lower. I believe this only really happens at HOC's lower than .250" on highly maintained turf and mainly putting greens that are cut at ultra low HOC's.

 

[Llano Estacado]

Thanks for the responses. Good info. I had sod put down three years ago and have not done any dethatching. Although I have had my cut set around a half inch last season I still was not totally satisfied with the actual height of the grass. It is still much lower than the previous year before I had my reel. I suspect I have a significant thatch layer that needs to be removed. My plan is upon first sign of green up to scalp as low as possible and then dethatch with a Classen slit seeder. Then go over that again with my rotary to clean things up, followed by food and drink for the lawn,... and probably myself. After that I plan to give it a week or two to recover and then begin a leveling project.

Thanks again for the good info.