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Should You Keep or Throw Away Your Lawn Cuttings?






by Nick Harbard


You will discover two ways of thinking when it comes to this issue - neither of which is definite. Quite a few people say leave the clippings on the lawn once you mow. This not just saves time and effort, but the clippings decompose fairly quickly and add crucial nutrients back into the ground.

The truth is, recycling grass cuttings has just lately taken on a movement of its own. Proponents call this practice "grass-cycling" and suggest that leaving those clippings where they lay saves time, landfill space and nourishes the ground. The Professional Lawn Care Association affirms that approximately twenty percent of all waste products that enters into a landfill is gardening trash and most of that is just grass clippings. With yard waste restrictions set up in many parts of the country, "grass-cycling" will give you a different option, and together improve the health and beauty of your lawn.

Grass cuttings are eighty-five percent water, break down fast, and return nourishing substances to the soil with no thatch accumulation. They can return twenty percent of their own nitrogen to the soil to feed the lawn's root system. And grass-cycling is often practiced year-round with most mowers.

On the other side, others state that leaving clippings on your lawn is not merely unappealing, but it could cause harm to your lawn also. Leaving grass clippings on the lawn will become a dilemma only when they are too thick. If you mow the lawn before it gets excessively tall, the bulk of your grass clippings will not be satisfactory to warrant raking. When cut grass lays in large clumps, it might be keeping the grass below it from having the sunshine and fluids which it simply needs to grow. This can leave behind ugly brown sections of dry grass.

An effective way to obviate needing to rake grass cuttings is to mow by way of a mulching lawn mower. When you've got a mulching mower, the cuttings are gathered in a carrier and can be utilized in rich compost piles for fertilization. Employing mulching mowers can cut down on your garden up keep, but it might also help make your grass greener. If you don't, you may end up either raking or bagging your grass cuttings, which will mean disposing of those grass clippings or trying to recycle them, which means added work.

The bottom line is provided that you are mowing fairly often and you don't leave behind clumps of clippings, it won't cause any sort of harm leaving your clippings right where they are.




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