Grass cuttings

[watervole]

 the neighbours were mowing their lawn today and putting the clippings into a bin bag to take down to the tip, so I asked (as I've sometimes done in the past as well) to have the cuttings.  They are happy to give them to me.

I've used most as  a surface mulch around the raspberries - grass clippings are very good at suppressing weeds.  They also add nitrogen to the soil and add organic matter.  They vanish totally in six months to a year, probably due to worm activity.

The remainder I put on the compost heap where they will mix well with the twiggy stuff and weeds that are already there.

Amazes me that anyone can just throw away such wonderfully useful stuff.


If using clippings at home, try and put them round your plants as soon as possible. If you leave them for long in a bin bag, moisture and heat will combine them into nasty, smelly clumps.  IF you get them onto the ground quickly this problem is avoided.

When spreading them, don't use more than  one or two cm thickness, or you'll run the risk of it getting clumpy.  Try and sprinkle them with your fingers to get plenty of air in the mix.  That will reduce any risk of smell ( it dries out like hay, rather than rotting soggily).

If composting grass cuttings, make sure they aren't the only thing on your compost heap.  Mix them up with kitchen waste, weeds, twigs and hedge cuttings, even egg boxes and cardboard.  Different types of material ensure that you have a mixture of 'greens' and 'browns'  and results in better compost (and it's produced faster).  Don't pack it all down hard, let a bit of air circulate.  You want it to decompose aerobically, not anaerobically.

Comments

[ranunculus]

I'm 100% with you on this one.

We don't produce any grass clipping on this block, nor do I believe either of the two blocks below us. In fact I can think of one private lawn in the neighbourhood, and it is quite small. We -do- have several parks with lawn areas tho. In San Francisco ALL the materials from the parks are composted. Household compostables including food soiled paper are composted by the city. The city compost is sold, mostly to grape growers and makes a profit. Ukiah house has a lawn, mostly because of fire protection. We compost all of that.

I home compost most of our kitchen waste, only sending out meat and fruit wastes because they tend to attract vermin and flies. I home compost about 95% of the garden waste, only putting things like rose canes and horrible weeds with seeds.

[oreouk]

I have to say the proportion of my lawn to surface area given over to non-lawn means that we generate a lot more lawn clippings than land on which to put them, though their use for weed suppression sounds good and I should try that (removing dandelions from the lawn before I cut it would probably help there). Other than that I an a super-lackadaisical gardener and have no compost bin but I am good about putting anything compostable into the special bin for that purpose that the town collects and composts. I totally understand the theory but I'm aware that this is one of the areas in which I would not do well translating theory into practice.

[watervole]

I compost meat and fruit as well, but I put them in a 'dalek' compost bin, as that has a fitted lid and avoids problems with vermin. Also, it heats up well in the sun, so there's a much higher chance of killing weed seeds.

Rose canes, I would always include. They're good 'browns'. They help provide air spaces in the compost as they created gaps where things aren't compacted so tightly, and they rot faster than most other woody material (raspberry canes are even better). Although you do need to cut them into shortish pieces (about six inches), I do that as part of the pruning process.

[watervole]

They are really good for weed suppression (and add nutrients at the same time).

However, if they're going into your green waste bin, at least they will be composted somewhere at the end of the day.

Dandelions are pretty. You can worry too much about weeds. Someone once said: "Choose which weeds you are prepared to live with". Yes, they can be a pain sometimes, but they are still wonderfully cheerful flowers.

[ranunculus]

How do rose thorns compost? I've had them really "get" me while working with compost!

[watervole]

Must admit I've never had much trouble with those. I put the prunings from our climbing rose in the compost bin along with everything else and they seem to vanish over time.

Then again, I tend to spread compost with a trowel, so I might not spot sharp bits anyway.

Even pyracantha hedge cuttings rot down and they make rose thorns look like a sofa. (I've trodden on one that I failed to pick up when clearing up after cutting the hedge, and it went right through my shoe into my foot. Owww!)

a riddle may be your answer. Spade your compost into a riddle, shake it to allow the small stuff through and tip any thing left over back into the compost bin. (I just put back big lumps of root/whatever and they disappear eventually.)

I'm a very relaxed composter. I regards everything as grist to the mill as long as it was alive at some stage or came from a living creature. My only precaution is to make sure that food waste has a tight fitting lid on the compost bin.

The plants seem to thrive on what comes out of the heap.

[igenlode]

On a related subject: I'm not very pleased with our new Cobra hand mower, whichcame as a boxed self-assembly kit with plastic linking components. I assumed these wouldn't last more than a couple of seasons, but I really didn't expect one of the metal bolts securing the handle to shear off on the very first usage! (This probably explains why they provided a couple of spares in the box...)

On the third usage, one of the wheels fell off -- there doesn't seem to be any obvious fixing mechanism, so it appears that they were either pressed on or glued on to the axle. The result is that the thing is now quite unusable, while the spring grass is growing at a rate of knots :-(

Do you have any recommendations for a lightweight hand mower? We used to have a Webb Witch, but it was pretty heavy to handle (eventually sold off as 'vintage'!)

[watervole]

Some mowers are incredibly shoddy. I remember my daughter had one where a plastic link kept breaking.

Out current mower hasn't been around long enough for me to know if it's any good. OUr previous one lasted a long time, but I can't recall what model it was - it was a fairly basic flymo type.