YOU look after your lawn, keeping it well watered in summer, making sure the weeds don’t get too much of a hold, mowing it often, fertilizing before the rain comes and trimming the edges.
Maybe it’s a big area you look after and have a ride-on mower or you’re a fussy lawn keeper and use a cylinder self-propelled mower, or an older person with just a little lawn area and use a small battery mower.
Whatever you have, you like to keep it neat and tidy.
That’s all great but, what do you do with the grass cuttings?
I see so many gardeners throwing away their cuttings in the refuse bin.
Throwing away a great source of nutrients for the garden.
Clippings that can perform a host of duties in the landscape.
Using the lawn clippings as mulch in the garden is a time-honoured method which enhances soil over time, prevents weeds from getting a hold in your garden and cooling the roots to preserves moisture.
Another way is allowing the clippings to fall back onto the cut grass.
This enhances your lawn as it finds its way to the root zone and breaks down into the soil. This only works well if you cut your lawn regularly as clumps of grass can soon yellow your lawn and make it look unsightly.
As a mulch, teamed with say sugarcane in your garden bed, and turned every week or so brings your garden to life, not showing just hard bare soil, but allows moisture to drain more evenly to the roots.
There is a view that using the fresh clippings as mulch adds back around 25 per cent of the nutrients that
growth removes from the soil.
There are some people with the view that weeds will grow when clippings are added to the soil, this is highly unlikely, far and away from the benefit the garden receives by this added attention.
Grass clipping contain high amounts of nitrogen a macro-nutrient that every plant needs to grow and flourish.
Another use for our surplus clippings is a bed to spread over a muddy pathway in your garden, the dried clippings soak up the moisture allowing a dryer walking area.
Use them around vegetable crops, though fresh clipping can get very hot and it is recommended that the clippings are cool when applied to sensitive areas, and not too close to the plants themselves.
This will prevent weeds growing and those that do are easily pulled out.
If you have a patch of weeds in an area, try putting your grass clippings on them quite thickly and add to the pile on a regular basis.
This not only kills the weeds but if you keep this pile growing in a couple of years, underneath you will have some beautiful friable soil for your pots or gardens.
Keep in mind that a heap of fresh grass clippings can generate a lot of heat, so fencing this area off to children or pets is recommended. So I hope I’ve given you some ideas, the advantages are many and once again there is no cost.
You too can be a ‘lazy (but wise) gardener’.
