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020 3026 8712

Opening times
  • Call Weekdays 9am - 7pm (Closed Between 1pm & 2pm)
  • Saturday Phone Lines 10am - 4pm
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Mulching Lawn Mowers – the modern way to mow your lawn?

First of all what exactly is mulching? In lawn mowing terms, mulching can be defined as the process whereby lawn cuttings are recycled and returned to the turf in the form of tiny fragments of grass. These recycled fragments then act as protective ‘mulch’ and help to conserve soil moisture, prevent weed growth and moderate soil temperature. As a result, lawns where mulching is applied tend to be healthier, greener and suffer less from disfiguration during drier weather.

Other benefits of mulching include a reduction in mowing times by up to 50%. Unlike the more common practice where grass clippings are collected, with mulching you don’t get the constant interruption of having to stop the mower and go backwards and forwards to the compost heap to empty the cuttings. With hosepipe bans in force in many areas during the summer months mulching has begun to become popular again in the UK as homeowners strive to limit the impact dry weather can have on a lawn. We say popular again as mulching was much the more common method of mowing the grass up until around fifty or so years ago and indeed this has always been the case for professionally maintained areas of grass such as golf courses and parks where professional grounds men have long understood the benefits of returning cuttings to the turf. As well as acting as protective mulch the tiny grass cuttings returned to your lawn also provide precious nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium and so help to drastically reduce the need for artificial fertilisers.

So what are the drawbacks of mulching? There are a couple of considerations you will need to keep in mind if you intend to use a mulching style lawn mower. Firstly, although mowing your lawn can be up to twice as quick with a mulching lawnmower, you do need to keep on top of your grass to maintain the benefits of mulching. For the best results you should only aim to cut the upper third of the grass plant when using a mulching mower and ought to avoid mowing down longer grass in one swoop. Secondly mulching lawnmowers won’t produce the best results in all conditions. If your grass is long and particularly if it is wet you are likely to achieve better results if you collect the cuttings in the first instance. That said, a decent mulching lawnmower will make a good job of it – it depends really how much of a perfectionist you are. Many mulching lawnmowers also provide you with the option of collecting as well mulching should you need to. These are know as 2-in-1 lawnmowers if they provide both and 3-in-1 lawnmowers if they provide you with the option to discharge cuttings as well – useful for areas of rough where the grass can be particularly long and appearance isn’t so much of an issue.

There also some common misunderstandings about mulching which are worth dispelling. The most common of these is the belief that mulching causes thatch. It doesn’t. Thatch is actually a natural phenomenon which is caused by the horizontal growth of tissues such as roots and rhizomes. Whilst eliminating thatch with a dethatcher or scarifier does assist in healthy grass growth by allowing air and moisture to get to the roots, mulching does not create it. The other main misapprehension people have buying a mulching lawnmower is that the grass cuttings will be visible and that they will stick to the shoes of anyone walking across the lawn and get trampled indoors creating a mess. This misunderstanding of what mulching is probably comes from people’s experience of lawnmowers which simply discharge the cuttings onto the lawn without being mulched and leaving small clumps of grass scattered across the lawn. On the contrary, a regularly mulched lawn will show no visible signs of the cuttings and the lawn will appear no different to one where the cuttings have been collected. Most of the tiny fragments of mulched grass will have entirely decomposed within just a day or two.

So are mulching lawnmowers the modern way to mow your lawn? The answer has to be yes and no. Yes, because they provide an organic and more natural method of maintaining a beautiful lawn without the need of artificial stimuli. No, because in many ways mulching is in fact the more traditional method of mowing a lawn and something our grandparent’s generation would have probably been only too familiar with.

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