Lawn Care 3 Reasons Not to Bag Clippings
Lawn Care 3 Reasons Not to Bag Clippings
Most cities now have programs to encourage people not to bag their lawn clippings. This is done to slow the flow of spring and summer lawn refuse going into landfills. There are three good reasons not to bag your lawn clippings listed bellow, so read them, and do yourself, your lawn, and the environment a favor, and put that bagger away!
1. Unless you compost clippings, they are just landfill! No one wants to add more than necessary to our landfills, but there are other reasons for not bagging, that are of practical use to the homeowner.
2. Your lawn needs organic matter. Lawns need organic matter for rebuilding the soil, and the clippings help provide it.
3. Your lawn needs those clippings for nutrients. It needs nutrients for rebuilding the grass. When you leave the clippings on your lawn you provide both. In a years time, your lawn produces enough nutrients to equal several applications of fertilizer. Removing the clippings, robs your lawn of these nutrients, gradually weakening it, requiring you to buy and apply more fertilizer.
It has been demonstrated that removing lawn clippings removes as much as 60% of the fertilizer you apply on a yearly basis. If you have a fairly large lawn, the savings could be substantial.
The arguments for bagging, and why they are wrong.
1. “My lawn builds a lot of thatch if I don’t bag.”
True, you can have a thatch problem, but that is really a symptom of another problem. Thatch is usually a sign that something isn’t working right.
A. The lawn is not breaking the thatch down through microbial activity as it should, which is either because the lawn has very little microbial activity, probably because it is not being fed enough material due to previous bagging.
Or:
B. There is too much growth between cuttings. This can be a result of over fertilization and irrigation, or too much time between cuttings.
The clippings need to be kept short in order to be broken down and reused by the soil. The smaller the better. If you are mowing once every two weeks, that will not be enough. In this case, you don’t need a bagger, you need a hay rake!
If you have a thatch problem, you should aerify, or dethatch your lawn, and start over by mowing more often, and leaving the clippings to degrade.
2. “I need to bag, to pick up the weed seed.”
A. First of all, your bagger will not pick up all the weed seeds.
B. If weeds are going to seed in your lawn, it should be mowed more frequently.
In general, the more often you mow, the better the quality of the lawn. This works because the nutrients are broken down more quickly, and are available for the grass to recycle. It also helps because more frequent mowing causes the grass to grow laterally, and keeps weeds from growing to maturity and producing seed.
Leaving your clippings on your lawn, reduces the amount of waste going into landfills, adds nutrients and organic matter to your law, can help save money on fertilizer, and promotes a healthier lawn. It just makes good sense!
Mowing Tips Lawns Lawn mowing Lawn mowing frequency
Tyler Lawn
Mowing Tips Lawns, lawn mowing, lawn mowing frequency
The most important lawn care practice.
Your lawn is important for more than aesthetics!
What is the first place in the great outdoors to which your children are exposed? Where do your pets play? Well, of course, your lawn! In most cases, this area comprises the largest part of a homeowners property. Providing a healthy safe, “bite free,” place for children and pets to play, offering a healthy, inviting pleasant place for family activities and neighborhood “get togethers” is your goal. In order to do this, there is one primary activity that you must perform, perform repeatedly, and perform properly to help you reach that goal:
Mowing.
Mowing is the one thing that if done properly, will yield the best bang for your buck where both your lawn, and pests are concerned. If all the other things are done reasonably well, this will make your lawn an oasis for you, and a hard target for pests.
Make sure that you start with a good mower, with sharp blades. Sharp blades cut the leaves of grass more smoothly, lessening the chance for disease, and adding to the overall appearance. A dull mower blade makes for a ragged cut, and makes mowing harder for you and your mower.
Since mowing is the most important part of lawn care, what is the most important part of a proper mowing program? That would be mowing frequency. You should mow as often as possible, at least once a week during the growing season.
Reasons for frequent mowing:
- The more often you mow, the “tighter” your lawn will become, because the grass will start to grow laterally rather than upward. This will create a more resilient lawn with more competition for weeds.
- Mowing more frequently will allow you to lower your mowing height, providing less cover for insects, and less cover means fewer bugs.
- As a result of the tightening of the turf, it will be more durable as well. Mowing heavily trafficked areas more frequently can help to prevent those ugly bald spots in your lawn.
- Since there is less leaf blade to transpire water, the lawn will need less water, and irrigation can become less frequent.
- Less frequent irrigation will help to keep fungus and bugs from becoming a problem.
- The clippings you have will be smaller, and will degrade more quickly, putting more nitrogen and organic matter back into the soil, so less fertilizer is needed to keep the lawn green and healthy.
- Thatch, and the insects that use it for cover, will be less of a problem.
- The need for bagging will disappear.
- It will help your lawn to be more healthy, and healthy lawns ward off lawn disease bugs, weeds, and fungus, can withstand more traffic, and suffer less from insect damage, recovering more quickly when these problems do occur.
- You will have fewer weed problems, because they can’t go to seed between mowing’s, and because the weeds will be competing with a healthy opponent.
The more frequently you mow, the smaller the clippings, so they become easily available for your lawn to recycle into nutrients, and organic matter. If you bag your lawns clippings, you are taking away as much as sixty percent of the lawns fertility, and depriving your lawn of organic matter and other benefits. Avoid bagging like your lawn depended on it. Leaving your clippings on your lawn, reduces the amount of waste going into landfills, adds nutrients and organic matter to your lawn, can help save money on fertilizer, and promotes a healthier lawn. It just makes good sense!
Frequent mowing discourages pests, disease and fungus. Fewer pests means a healthier lawn, a healthier lawn will discourage pests! See my point? All this means that you will need fewer pesticides, and that means a healthier you!
Lawncare Pest Control Tips And Advice
Tyler Lawn
Lawncare Pest Control Tips and Advice
Lawn care, there is more to it than you might think. You have to consider everything that’s involved, like mowing, fertilizing, irrigating, and even pest control. It turns out, that good lawn care, and good pest control go hand in hand. as a matter of fact, if you use proper lawn care techniques, you will have very few pests to have to control by other means!
Proper lawn care and pest control go hand in hand.
The list bellow gives a few details about good lawn maintenance, as it relates to the control of pests.
- Scalping your lawn, weakens the scalped area’s turf, and allows weed invaders to take the place of the weakened grass.
- Not mowing the grass at a low enough level, leaves cover for insects and allows some low growing weeds to reproduce seed under the mowing height
- Thatch hides insects, and should be removed or cultivated, and not allowed to build up. Good mowing practices will stop it from building.
- Waiting too long between mowing’s, can allow weeds time to reach seed head maturity, and plant themselves in your nice green lawn. Too much growth also provides cover for insects.
- When you have waited too long to mow, change your mowing height, so that you take off less leaf blade, and then mow again in a few days at a lower cutting height. Do this in increments until you reach your desired cutting height.
- You should never remove more than one third of the top at a time. Taking too much off at once will leave your lawn in a weakened condition, inviting more bugs and weeds to take over.
- Avoid mowing weedy outside areas before you mow your lawn. If you have to do this for some reason, stop and thoroughly clean your mower between the two areas.
- Mow away from your landscape beds and garden to avoid throwing grass, weed clippings, and seed into them.
- Don’t “over water” your lawn and landscape beds. Many weed pests, and bug pests enjoy excess water, and may decide to take up residence in the new sea side resort in your landscape. Over watering fuels fungus, and bacteria as well.
- Over fertilization leads to most of the same problems as over watering.
- Don’t fertilize your lawn too late in the year. If you do, you may be fertilizing winter weeds instead of grass.
- Avoid aerifying late in the fall. Aerifying at that time, will plant the weed seeds that would have otherwise rotted on top of the ground.
- Avoid lawn compaction. Areas with heavy foot traffic, are likely to have poor quality turf, and are subject to invasion by weeds that like compacted areas. If you have compaction, loosen it by aerifying. If the area is getting so much traffic because it is convenient, you could make a paved foot path through the area, or you could plant or build a traffic barrier to make it less convenient.
Tyler Lawn Help: Cultivation Fertilization Irrigation
Tyler Lawn
Tyler Lawn Help Cultivation, fertilization, and irrigation.
Enjoy caring for your own lawn? That’s good, maybe we can offer some tips, advice, and “how to” help.
Mowing
Mowing is the biggest part of, and the primary activity in lawn care, but it is not the only thing. Not by a long shot! There are still plenty of other things that need to be done, so out of the easy chair, and into the sun!
Other lawncare activities
Your lawn needs air, water, nutrients, and an easy way to get them all into the root zone where those plants can make use of them. With that in mind, we will start with lawn cultivating. There is no need in fertilizing and irrigating if the ground is so compacted that it has no air space. Air, nutrients, and water can’t get into the root zone if there is no space for them to occupy. They will just run off into the roadway and drainage system. Cultivating will provide the needed space.
Lawn Cultivation.
Cultivating is not needed as often as the other items on our list, but it is highly important.
If you have a thatch build up, or compaction problems, aerifying, or verticutting will aid in keeping your lawn in good condition. Thatch hides insects and provides conditions which encourage insect reproduction. It also weakens the lawn grasses, deprives them of natural nutrients, and inhibits water intake.
If your lawn is in need of renovating, cultivation is essential. Top dressing could be a separate subject, but I mention it here because cultivation and top dressing are usually a collaborative efforts. Cultivating twice per year will have a positive impact on your law, and more frequent cultivation in high stress areas can work wonders. Avoid cultivating your lawn late in the fall. It will plant weed seed that would have otherwise rotted on the surface.
Fertilizing.
Getting the right amount of nutrients to your lawn is important. For the best fertilizer, mow more frequently, which will leave smaller, more easily broken down clippings, and don’t bag your clippings They can return as much as 60 percent of the nutrients to the soil. Of course, you will want to add more fertilizer, so start with something like one pound of nitrogen per thousand square feet of lawn space per application. Three applications per year should be sufficient.
Of course you will need to adjust this to the needs of your particular lawn. Most common lawn grasses can use as much as two pounds per thousand square feet, per application.
Some fertilizers use sulfur coated urea formaldehyde. The sulfur coating slows the release of nutrients, allowing for more time between applications. You can use these at higher levels, less frequently. If you use regular fertilizer, smaller doses at more frequent intervals are recommended.
Irrigating.
Keeping your grass healthy requires making the right amount of water available. Too little and it desiccates, to much and it will languish and invite fungus, pests, and disease. I am not going to go into the details of precipitation rates, or evapotranspiration rates (yes, they are real terms) but you should watch your lawn. If it is soggy two hours after watering, you should probably back off the water a little. If it is dry at a depth of one inch, you should increase the watering.
Pest Control.
If you have done everything else on the list right, the chances of having pest problems is greatly diminished. The best lawn pest control is a healthy lawn! There can still be problems due to weather conditions, and other natural phenomena, but even these will be diminished.
More Resources: