Monday, January 9, 2012

Should You Keep or Throw Away Your Lawn Cuttings?

By Nick Harbard


There are two ways of thinking with regards to this matter - none of which is definite. A number of people say leave the clippings on the lawn whenever you mow. This doesn't just saves time and energy, but also the cuttings decompose quickly and add vital vitamins and minerals directly into the soil.

In truth, recycling grass clippings has fairly recently adopted a movement of its own. Advocates refer to this as practice 'grass-cycling' and recommend that leaving those clippings wherever they set saves time, landfill space and nourishes the soil. The Professional Lawn Care Association claims that about 20 percent of all waste materials that enters into a landfill is landscape waste and about 50% of that is simply grass clippings. With garden waste prohibitions set up in many regions of the country, grass-cycling gives you another option, and simultaneously boosts the health and beauty of your lawn.

Grass cuttings are 85% water, decompose quickly, and return nutrients and vitamins to the ground with no thatch accumulation. They actually do return twenty percent of their own nitrogen to the ground to satisfy the lawn's root system. And grass-cycling may be employed all year with almost all mowers.

On the opposite side, others claim that leaving cuttings in your yard is not merely unattractive, but it may cause harm to your lawn also. Leaving grass cuttings on the lawn will become a dilemma only when they are much too thick. In the event you mow the lawn before it gets excessively high, the volume of the grass cuttings will not be enough to justify raking. When cut grass lies in big clumps, it can be stopping the grass under it from receiving the sunlight and liquid that it will need to grow. This may leave behind undesirable brown patches of dry grass.

A smart way to obviate being required to rake grass cuttings is to mow using a mulching lawn mower. Once you have a mulching mower, the cuttings are collected in a container and can be utilized in compost piles for fertilization. Working with mulching mowers can not only reduce your yard preservation, but it may also make your grass greener. In any other case, it's possible you'll end up either raking or bagging the grass cuttings, which in turn means dumping those grass cuttings or recycling them, which means more work.

The bottom line is provided that you are mowing consistently and you don't leave behind large sections of cuttings, it will not cause any sort of harm leaving your cuttings right where they are.




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