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Questions about mulching vs bagging vs throwing

Posted: October 28th, 2019, 1:04 pm
by starpartyguy
I've been in this house for 2 years now. The lawn was in pretty poor shape. The first year I tried using the 4 step Scotts treatment and only had minimal luck. This year we hit a drought and I didn't have any sprinkler system up. Lost a third of the lawn to weeds, grubs, etc.

Over the past couple months i have been working on repairing my lawn. I used other areas of this forum for some badly needed help. Now my lawn is looking a lot better.

Over the past two years I just threw the grass and let it lay. A couple months ago I had a soil test and it showed low levels of organic matter. I dethatched and pulled 16 bags of dead grass out of 10k of lawn.

I bought a pair of gator blades for my 46 inch Cub Cadet tractor. Do you think the mulching will prevent the dead grass buildup? Should I use the D-thatch stuff over next summer to improve decomposition?

Also, if you don't have the option to mulch because the grass grew too high too fast, do you bag or just mulch 2x?

Thanks.

Re: Questions about mulching vs bagging vs throwing

Posted: October 28th, 2019, 8:53 pm
by schreibdave
I don't ever bag. If the grass is long I will mow east/west then north/south and if necessary diagonally. If you are mowing often enough with sharp blades there should be no clumps of dead grass on the lawn.

No sure what the d-thatch stuff is that you are talking about but it is unlikely that you have thatch, so no I wouldn't use that.

Re: Questions about mulching vs bagging vs throwing

Posted: October 29th, 2019, 7:34 pm
by HoosierLawnGnome
You need to mow often enough that you aren't taking off that much. Yes, if your machine mulches moderately well, you will not have to worry about blade buildup on the surface. In the rare scenario where you are gone on vacation etc and have to take off a lot at once, a double cut with mulching blades will often take care of the extra clippings.