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Grass Issues – To Bag or Not to Bag
from: Lawn and Garden MagicThe most basic actions you must perform on your lawn is mowing. Every weekend you fire up your lawn mower, make your way to the yard, and start the usual routine: push down, back, down, empty the bag, and repeat. The question is, do you have to empty the bag? If fact, eo you have to bag the clippings at all? This is something that is debated on cul-de-sacs all over the world. The truth is, there's a time to bag your clippings and a time not to bag them. You can eliminate much of the time consuming work of bagging and emptying if you educate yourself on the scientific reasoning behind mulching, while, at the same time, remember there are good times to bag your clippings.
You've probably thought in the past that mulching or leaving clippings isn't good for your lawn because it can contribute to thatch. Actually, this isn't true. Thatch, for the most part, is made up of dead or dying roots, leaves and other slow-decomposing organic matter -- but not grass. Lawn clippings decompose at a quite a rapid rate, and can actually make your lawn more durable.
Clippings contain a lot of the same nutrients found in fertilizers you purchase at a gardening center. Every bag of clippings you remove from your yard, you're taking a quarter pound of organic nitrogen. Do you want to figure out how much do you pay for organic nitrogen for your lawn? By mulching your clippings back into the lawn, you can actually save a lot on fertilization costs. Imagine how much you'd save if you fertilized one less time every year.
Leaving your lawn clippings on your grass helps create a cushion under your lawn surface that is healthier than the thatch, enough to help maintain the lawns durability. Clippings will also help keep your soil temperatures down and moisture in the soil where your grass can actually make use of it.
There are lots of benefits to leaving your clippings on your lawn, or mulching them down, but there are also good reasons to bag your clippings from time to time as well -- especially if you let the lawn get away from you. Perhaps you were out of town and let it go a week longer than usual or got busy and didn’t get to it -- whatever the reason. if you're cutting more than an inch off of your lawn, you're creating quite large clippings and these clippings of an inch or more may have trouble getting between the blades of grass and down to the soil where they can do some good. In this situation it's best to bag the clippings. You can still use them in a compost pile or for fertilizing other plants, however. Just remember that if your lawn has been recently treated with chemicals, you should wait through two mowings before using them on any other plants.
Another reason to bag your clippings is the presence of dandelions in your yard that have gone to seed. In a perfect world you'd never have dandelions growing in your yard, but the reality is that not everyone has the time eliminate them completely. If you left them in after they went to seed and then mowed them, you'll end up with lots more dandelions than you had in the first place.
Traditionally, lawn clippings have been bagged and set out with the trash collection each week. However, the trend is definitely moving away from the bagging of lawn clippings. When you leave clippings on the lawn, it has been discovered that the clippings can reduce water evaporation and lawn weary by adding a cushion. This creates healthier grass by giving nutrients and maintaining cooler temperatures in the soil through hot summer days. When you leave your clippings, except for specific situations, you'll create a more self-maintaining lawn and save yourself some money at the same time.
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