If you have ever wanted a simple way to improve your garden’s quality or make mowing your lawn a little faster, grasscycling might be the tip you need. Grasscycling is recycling your grass clippings to provide your freshly cut lawn with some additional nutrients to help it flourish. By reusing your grass clippings, you can grow a healthier lawn and save time and money on your garden maintenance.
It can even help you do a little more to help the environment. In a world where everyone seems to be telling you how to live better for less, it can be strange to think that so many of us are missing out on some of the simplest changes you can make. When it comes to taking care of your garden, recycling clippings is one of those simple changes, and by following these tips for mowing and watering your lawn, you can achieve a healthy, green garden with even less waste.
Grasscycling Full Guide
Fertilization Tips
One of the main practical benefits of grasscycling is how it makes the task of mowing a lawn so much easier. By leaving trimmings across the freshly cut grass, there is no need for bagging them up and disposing of this garden waste. As long as the trimmings are kept short through regular mowing, they can lie among the grass to help it grow. Of course, not having to bag up the clippings saves a bit of extra money and saves a lot of time after mowing.
What is more, without bagging up your trimmings you can garden in a more environmentally friendly way, making your lawn mowing as green as your lawn. Not only does it avoid the disposal of garden waste in plastic bags, but it reduces the amount of fertilizer needed, preventing the problems caused by chemicals running through the drains. However, this does not eliminate the need for fertilizer, and a usual fertilization routine should be followed even when grasscycling. When it comes to grass fertilization, it’s always better to use fertilizer in small amounts on a regular basis than to use lots of it less frequently.
This way, the grass will not be encouraged to grow too fast too quickly, which can become a problem when trying to recycle your clippings. If the grass grows too much, your clippings will be longer than usual. This means that scattering them around your lawn will cover much of the grass still growing, causing problems for the health of your garden. Therefore, fertilizer should be used regularly in low amounts to maintain a fresh and green garden. If you can keep that up, you should enjoy seeing a reduction in how much fertilizer you use.
Watering Tips
Another important factor to take into account when recycling your grass clippings is how well watered your grass is. Collecting and scattering your grass clippings can help give nutrients to a properly watered lawn and can even help maintain water around flower beds and other areas of your garden. However, it is important to remember that leaving your grass clippings on the lawn does not mean that there needs to be more water. In fact, having more water will only make it grow faster, and, like with over-fertilizing, this will make your clippings too long to be of any benefit to your garden’s health.
When watering your lawn, you must check how your garden drains, especially if it is on a slope or you suffer a bad weather spell. Naturally, this is advice that should be followed whether you reuse your grass clippings, but when grasscycling it becomes all the more important to ensure you are watering at a responsible rate. Otherwise, the benefits of reusing clippings, both in terms of using less water and having a healthier lawn, will be lost.
Mowing Tips
As well as proper watering and fertilization, grasscycling requires regular and efficient lawn mowing. Again, mowing your lawn should not be made any more difficult than it was before grasscycling, provided that you cut your grass in a practical way. The main thing to remember here is that your clippings need to stay short. If you over-fertilize or over-water your lawn, the grass will grow longer than usual and, when it comes to getting the lawnmower out, there will be a lot more to cut off.
Likewise, regular lawn mowing can keep it in check and stop it from getting too long. Otherwise, those long cut-offs will ruin what could be a lovely green garden. One simple trick to follow is the ‘one-third rule.’ Gardeners abide by this common rule of thumb to stop their grass from growing too wildly. Essentially, you should cut the lawn often enough so that the clippings are never more than one-third of the length of a full blade. This way, the grass clippings will always be at a moderate length for recycling.
Of course, this regularity is weather dependent, and there’s no need to keep cutting your lawn so often in winter when it grows slowly. In addition, it is also important to use sharp blades for lawn mowing, as this will ensure your lawn is cut evenly, preventing disease. As well as being useful for grasscycling, these fertilization methods, watering and mowing your lawn also prevent disease in a garden, which will be damaging to all plant life whether you recycle your grass clippings or not. Proper mowing, watering, and fertilization are always important for a healthy lawn.
When to Grasscycle
Recycling your grass clippings can make your lawn healthier and save the environment and the money in your wallet. However, sometimes it isn’t possible to keep up with your garden maintenance as frequently as necessary to make grasscycling beneficial. For example, when suffering from long periods of bad weather and rain, recycling your grass clippings is probably not worth your time. Similarly, if you can’t mow your lawn regularly, then it is likely your cuttings will be too long and it isn’t worth bothering.
If this is the case, there’s still no need to bag your trimmings and dispose of them as normal. Compost heaps are a great way to let your trimmings decompose without any cost or danger to our environment. Also, simply leaving your clippings around plants and flower beds can help store water for the other life you might have in the garden. You could even use the clippings as a mulch to help stop weeds from growing out of control. There are so many ways to use or get rid of grass clippings without bagging them up that it would be impractical to keep doing so.
While recycling your trimmings is a great option for looking after your lawn, there are other things you can do when that isn’t possible. Therefore, before bagging up your trimmings, it’s always worth finding a way to reuse them and keep your lawn fresh and healthy.
Hello, My name is Shari & I am a writer for the ‘Outlook AppIns’ blog. I’m a CSIT graduate & I’ve been working in the IT industry for 3 years.