I recently inherited my house and all the chores that come with it, but since I am naturally very lazy and ironically also have a medical condition that makes it hard for me to do physical jobs, I tend to delay chores as much as I can, meaning I cut my grass every 2 weeks instead of every week.
In addition, I live in a climate where summers are as hot as in the mediterranean and if I don’t water the lawn for just one or two days, it starts dying out. The result is that after a few years of minimal care, my lawn is 90% weeds and a few patches of grass that are far from each other.
I decided to deal with this and to start from scratch, to reseed and in the process, I found about grasscycling or leaving grass clippings on the lawn, instead of picking them up like I have always.
Since they apparently have a ton of nitrogen and serve as fertilizers, will leaving them on the ground be a good thing, especially in my less than optimal conditions, or will they also boost weed growth as well?
Where I come from we call it mulching, and I switched over to it a few years ago. The trick is to mow every week so the grass doesn’t grow too high and the mulch doesn’t cover the grass. So far it’s worked out well for me and I haven’t had to deal with grass clippings in years. There has been no increase in weeds.
Where I live I need to water 4 days a week during the summer. If you can’t cut your grass every week, and it grows a lot during the summer, it might not work for you, but it’s worth a try. There are plenty of weed killers out there that kill broadleaf weeds and don’t hurt your grass.
I don’t mind dealing with grass clippings themselves, I’m mostly interested in whether leaving them on lawn under my conditions (less mowing and watering than I should do, during a hot summer) will help the grass get more nitrogen/nutrients and be more resilient/longer lasting or will it make no real difference?
You can get a mulching mower (I have one) that grinds the clippings finer than usual and blows them back down into the grass. If I mow regularly and don’t let the grass get too long, it’s like magic - the clippings just completely disappear.
If I wait too long and the grass gets long then it doesn’t work as well and there are clippings left around the place, but it’s still not too bad visually.
And yes the more organic material you put back into the soil, the less water the lawn will lose.
Sounds like, for starters, you don’t have much grass but lots of weeds. So you’re probably going to mow it down to bare dirt mostly, and leave the cuttings spread out on the ground? Then there’s going to be that mediterranean-hot summer? I think those clippings are going to be dried out and blowing all over the place, unless you plow them under.
ETA: One good way to discourage more weed growth would be to mow them all down early in the weed season, before they all go to seed, and get rid of all the clippings. Then you’ll have a lot less weeds next year. Repeat this for a few years, and you’ll have the weeds largely under control. It may be too late for you to do that now this year. But if you mow down weeds now and plow them under, you’re just sowing next year’s crop of weeds.
Mulching involves leaving short grass clippings on the lawn. You get that either by mowing somewhat frequently, or having a mulling mower/blade that chops up the clippings. Mulching is good.
What is not good for the lawn is cutting infrequently, and then leaving long clippings lying on top of the lawn, where they stunt grass growth.
Re-establishing a lawn that is far gone is a kinda complex task. More than just tossing out some seed. We had very good success last year eliminating some weeds and reseeding some bare spots, but it took a bit of planning and sustained effort.
If your climate is as severe as you describe (where, approximately?), such things as the time of day that you water/mow can make a huge difference. If you want something that requires less ongoing maintenance, look into an alternative to turf grass. Last year, we bought a rechargeable self-propelled mower, which really makes mowing easier and more pleasant.
It’s actually harder to find a non-mulching mower these days. There’s literally very little downside to a modern mulching mower. Unless you let your lawn get totally out of hand, a mulching mower will be able to cut it and the clippings will be small and unnoticeable. And they’re very good for the grass- they can supply up to 25% of a yard’s fertilizer needs (clippings have a 4-2-1 NPK analysis).
I’m skeptical that the OP has to water every couple of days. Unless they’ve got some kind of particularly prissy grass, they should be able to water it once a week for an hour or so and have it live just fine. The trick is watering it deep but infrequently and letting the roots chase the deeper water. Maybe at the hottest part of the summer you could water twice a week if necessary.
This is what I’d do. If you’re already committed to re-seeding, and are disinclined to weekly maintenance, then something like clover might be a superior option. Find something like that, which works for the local climate. I’d bet money your local Home Depot type store would have suggestions.
Most of them come with the option to bag, but they’re set up to mulch (it requires a certain designed deck and blade to get the airflow right) anyway.
Basically there’s not a whole lot of point in bagging anymore. Even the commercial yard services don’t bag much, since the mulching mowers do such a good job these days.
I’ve been mulching the lawn for 30+ years and found that a dual blade mulching mower seems to work best. The only drawback may be the accumulation of thatch that over time can start to smother grass, pool rain in low areas as well as harbor diseases and pests but it can be removed in a process called dethatching. Aeration, previously mentioned, is also beneficial and I’ve had that done twice. I’ll probably go for dethatching next year followed by some reseeding.
My experience as well. I’ve never really understood why people continue to bag. Heck, I just mulch all of my leaves as well.
Core aeration in spring or fall is supposed to be great. They do it on golf courses regularly. We have it done every couple of years. The machine is pretty heavy and a pain to transport. When I was younger/poorer, I occasionally would split the rental fee w/ a couple of neighbors.
The one I always loved are the manual aerators. Can you IMAGINE the effort that would be involved to use one of those on anything other than a coffee-table sized yard?
If you mow them before they go to seed, there’s no need to remove the clippings.
Whatever weeds are surviving in your particular lawn, they’re plants that are good at getting at the available nutrients in that place. Those nutrients get pulled up by the plant (sometimes from quite deep in the soil where lawn grasses can’t reach them), and if you leave the clippings on the soil, those nutrients will be returned (as the clippings break down) to a depth and in a form in which the grass can use them.
A mixed-species lawn would probably be easier to maintain than a grass-only lawn. Which species, whether of grass or of other things, are best depends on the area – check with your county extension agency (or equivalent), they should be able to help you.
If there’s live healthy soil life in your soil, they’ll digest those clippings just fine, and there won’t be any long-term accumulation of thatch. It’s possible of course that past chemical use and/or other poor treatment may have left you with nearly sterile soil, though. Try some live compost.
