Planning Your 2021 Lawn Care

Even though it’s deep winter. this is the time to make arrangements for the most sustainable thing you can do in your yard in 2021, Yes, January is the time to make sure you will be saving money and building a health lawn, by doing one simple thing: making arrangements to save your own grass clippings!

Every summer truckloads of grass clippings are hauled AWAY from residential lawns by mowing companies even though we’ve long known that grass clippings are the best fertilizer for the lawn. They are the very best source of organic nitrogen, and actually provide approximately 25% of the nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus needs of your grass, if left on the lawn when mowing is done. Why give grass clippings away and then pay for fertilizer additives?

Here’s how to ensure that you keep your valuable grass clippings:

·       If you mow your own lawn, mow no closer than 3.5 to 4 inches and use a mulching mower if possible. “Mowing taller” as this is called allows the clippings to fall easily into the lawn. Using a mulching mower will distribute the clippings so they do not clump when the lawn is thick and growing fast in the spring.

·       This means not mowing at all in midsummer when the weather is hot and dry and the grass is not growing.

·       If you use a mowing service, ask these two questions:

1.       Will you cut my grass no shorter than 4” and refrain from mowing if the grass does not require it?

2.       Do you use mulching mowers?

Your landscape maintenance company should answer both these questions affirmatively. If  they don’t, look elsewhere. It is possible to find qualified companies who will say “yes.”

If you make these plans now, before you sign a maintenance contract for 2021, or before it’s time for you to be in the yard doing that first mowing, you’ll be taking the first step to a healthier lawn.

Then if you want to realize the savings that your grass clippings provide and you use a mowing service, limit your contract to mowing only and switch to an organic lawn care company for fertilization, aeration and other techniques that will support a healthy lawn.