When your grass is cut, as much as 25% of the nitrogen in your lawn fertilizer is lost. Nitrogen is the primary nutrient in fertilizer and absolutely essential to a healthy lawn, promoting optimal growth, green leaves, and a healthy balance in the soil.
Many people collect grass clippings, then bag them and simply throw them away. However, those clippings contain valuable nutrients and organic matter, and using them as mulch in your lawn has numerous benefits. This practice is known as grasscycling.
At Main Street Mowing in Highland Village, TX, we utilize grasscycling, along with many other practices that give you a consistently clean and beautiful lawn. Wondering how it works and what the benefits could be for your own lawn? You’re in the right place.
What Is Mulch?
By definition, mulch is any material spread over soil to act as a protective cover, allowing water, air, and sunlight to penetrate the ground below. Mulch regulates the soil temperature and pH balance, helps to retain moisture, and can prevent weeds from growing.
Grass clippings act as organic mulch, meaning it was formerly living plant material. When Main Street Mowing comes to perform your regular lawn mowing service, instead of bagging and removing the grass clippings, we allow them to simply fall on the lawn and begin composting naturally. Clippings under one inch long quickly fall down to the grass roots and sit directly on top of the soil. Then they begin decomposing almost immediately. During this decomposition process, the grass’s valuable nutrients are recycled into the soil.
Benefits of Using Grass Clippings as Mulch
Reusing grass clippings is a simple and highly effective way to improve the quality of your soil and lawn while saving you money. Plus, it’s environmentally friendly to reuse the valuable organic matter contained in the grass instead of letting it go to waste.
Healthy Soil
Using grass clippings as mulch in your lawn reintroduces up to 25% of essential nutrients that would otherwise be lost, including nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus. This reduces the amount of artificial fertilizer your lawn needs over the course of the year, while also increasing the amount of organic matter in the soil.
According to the U.S. Composting Council, soil containing a minimum of 5% organic matter is ideal, but the average lawn contains just 2-3%. Increasing that percentage by just 1% can take years, but recycling grass clippings is a natural way to speed up the process. Worms and beneficial bacteria in the soil begin to feed on the composting grass clippings immediately, which helps increase the amount of organic matter in the soil.
Mulching grass clippings also helps to cool the root zone of grass, which reduces evaporation through heat. Conserving moisture helps to retain the valuable nutrients in both the soil and grass, further improving the health of your soil.
Improved Lawn Appearance
Grass clippings, particularly when dry, can prevent weeds from taking root and mud from building up. Many experts also believe that grasscycling allows beneficial insects to flourish and keep pests away. Additionally, when distributed evenly, recycled grass clippings are virtually invisible and therefore much more pleasing to the eye than other types of mulch, including wood chips, shredded leaves, and straw.
Cost Savings
The average grass lawn in Texas needs about four pounds of nitrogen, one pound of phosphorus, and two pounds of potassium added to it annually. Mulching your grass clippings in your lawn can add up to one pound of nitrogen back into the soil, essentially eliminating up to one full fertilizer application each year, saving you both labor and money.
The benefits of having your grass clippings recycled as mulch in your lawn are clear, but it’s important to note that in order to fully enjoy them, you should be getting quality, routine lawn maintenance. At Main Street Mowing, we make it easy to do exactly that. We make every effort to send the same crew to mow and care for your lawn for every appointment, whether it’s each week or once a month. Our professionally trained and award-winning crew keeps detailed notes to give you the right service each time. We know which direction we cut your lawn last and will alternate it each time to avoid leaving ruts in the lawn.
Main Street Mowing has been servicing lawns throughout the Highland Village, Flower Mound, and Lewisville areas since 2005, and many of our clients have been with us since then. We pride ourselves in doing each job exceptionally well the first time and keep an open line of communication with our clients. For all your lawn care needs, call us at (214) 317-8301, or get an instant quote online today.