Mulching Leaves With Your Lawn Mower
Autumn is here and with it come mountains of colorful leaves in warm tones, falling all over your lawn. For most people, this signals that it’s time to get out the rake or a noisy leaf blower and some trash bags and start clearing up the leaves before they kill their grass. However, did you know that there’s another, much easier and less wasteful option? You can use your trusty lawn mower to mulch those leaves instead. Here’s why you should and how, courtesy of Manor Home Center.
Benefits
There are several reasons it’s beneficial to mulch the leaves on your lawn instead of raking or blowing them away. When you create mulch out of dead leaves, you can improve the health of your soil, which helps your grass to grow. Also, when you’re not using plastic garbage bags or gas-powered leaf blowers, you’re helping the environment. The mulch also has a positive effect on bugs and other organisms in the soil, and you can add it to your garden. Mowing and mulching leaves is also a lot faster than raking or blowing leaves.
Mulching Kits
It can be helpful to outfit your mower with a mulching kit, unless you’re looking to buy a new lawn mower. In that case, there are mowers that have specific mulching capabilities. However, you don’t really need either of these tools to be successful. It may just take more passes over your lawn to really mulch your leaves.
Preparation
Set the mower blade’s height as high as you can for mulching and remove the clipping bag. If your leaves are really thickly spread, it can help to spread them out in a thinner layer or maybe create a separate pile by skimming some leaves off the top. Mowers can typically mulch about 6” of leaves at a time.
Mulching Time
Mow your lawn as usual over the top of the leaves. You may need to make multiple passes over the leaves to cut them down small enough. Leaf particles should be about the size of a dime or a half-inch in diameter in order to be mulch. Now you let those chopped-up leaves stay where they are, somewhat obscured by your grass blades, and when you mow again in a week, use your bag and empty the mulched remains of grass and leaves onto your garden bed.
Visit our dealership in Oakland, MD, today to check out our wide stock of new and used lawn mowers for sale. We can assist you with financing options on your purchase as well; just talk to one of our sales team members to learn more. Manor Home Center serves all of Garrett County, Maryland, as well as our neighbors in Morgantown, West Virginia.