Every year your lawn creates about a hundred pounds of nitrogen per acre. That is over two pounds of nitrogen per one thousand square feet, which is about two fertilizer applications per year.
It is estimated by many experts, that up to 60 percent of the fertilizer applied to your lawn is removed by removing the clippings.
When you bag, you are removing a significant amount of organic matter from your lawn.
The money saved can be substantial if you have a large lawn.
Now, there is work involved, if you wait too long between cuttings, the grass could grow so much that the cuttings do not break down quickly, but I know, if you are reading this, that you are interested in creating a healthy lawn, and would never allow that to happen. Mowing frequency is a big part of good lawn care, and on most of our grasses, the more frequently you mow, the better the quality of your lawn. This helps in a couple of ways:

It makes the clippings easier for nature to break down into nitrogen.
It causes the grass to grow laterally, thus getting thicker, and filling in the empty spaces, or as we say, it “tightens the turf”. This makes your lawn more wear tolerant.
I hope you will give this consideration when the time to begin mowing arrives. It is the most ecological, economical and aesthetic way to a better lawn!

When you start planning out your routine for lawn garden and landscape maintenance, give a little thought to the single most effective thing that you can do to improve your lawn. Increasing mowing frequency will help your lawn in ways you might not have thought about.

Here are 10 great reasons you should:

1. The more often you mow, the “tighter” your lawn will become, because the grass will start to grow laterally rather than upward.

2. Mowing more frequently will allow you to lower your mowing height, providing less cover for insects, and less cover means fewer bugs.

3. 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.

4. Since there is less leaf blade to transpire water, the lawn will need less water, and irrigation can become less frequent.

5. Less frequent irrigation will help to keep fungus from becoming a problem.

6. 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.

7. Thatch will be less of a problem.

8. The need for bagging will disappear.

9. It will help your lawn to be more healthy, and healthy lawns ward off lawn disease and fungus, can withstand more traffic, and suffer less from insect damage, recovering more quickly when these problems do occur.

10.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.

Let’s recap.
Mowing more frequently saves money on fertilizer and irrigation, makes your lawn stronger, tighter, and more bug, weed, disease and fungus resistant.

There is another benefit of more frequent mowing. It provide exercise. If you want to tone up, or work off some extra weight, why not double the benefit? So, what are you waiting for? Get out there and mow, mow, mow!

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!