We strongly recommend that you adopt grasscycling.
What is grass cycling?
Very simply, when mowing we recommend that you leave the grass clippings on your lawn. We also strongly recommend that you shred the leaves on your property in the fall. We therefore advise mowing without a bag. This is environmentally friendly and will bring many benefits to the health of your lawn and soil.
The only exception
If you have weeds that could be spread, we suggest putting the bag back on. Weeds in bloom or in seed are of greater concern. It is advisable to put the bag back on when mowing these areas of the yard. Since you don’t pick them up, you risk spreading them.
Here is an example
On the front of your property, you have crabgrass plants in seed near the street, so we advise you to put on the bag of the mower for this area and remove the bag for the other sections (the back and other parts). It is therefore possible to do partial grasscycling on your property.
Why is it so important for us to adopt grasscycling?
Here are the benefits:
Time and effort savings during mowing
It is much easier to mow without a bag. Moreover, you will no longer waste time getting rid of the mowed grass. You will also save a lot of time in the fall as you won’t have to rake your leaves! Everyone knows that leaf collection can be time-consuming and difficult. Additionally, once the leaves are shredded (leafcycling), they will provide the same benefits as grasscycling.
Grass clippings bring nutrients back to your lawn
It’s difficult to quantify exactly how many nutrients are given back when grasscycling, but many experts claim that grasscycling gives back nearly 30% of the nitrogen in your lawn. This is a significant advantage, especially when you consider the number of mowings carried out in a season!
Grasscycling restores moisture to your soil
Grass clippings will give some of their moisture (water) back to your soil, helping to counter potential water stress caused by mowing.
You’ll be giving some of our treatment back to your soil
Grasscycling will restore part of our treatment if it has been recently applied. In most cases, it’s not dramatic to mow after the prescribed time after application of our treatments (e.g. 12 hours without mowing after our treatment). The weed treatment will have had time to take effect. On the other hand, we sincerely believe that it’s a good idea to mow your lawn if you intend to mow after we’ve applied our treatment, to avoid having to remove part of the treatment (fertilizer, mycorrhizae or chinch bug insecticide).
*Always follow our recommendations after each pass to optimize the effectiveness of our treatments.
Mown grass will give your soil back its sugars
The sap contained in mowed grass brings sugars to your soil, feeding the beneficial microorganisms in it. The sugars do not directly nourish the lawn, but contribute to the health of your soil by feeding beneficial micro-organisms (e.g. bacteria, fungi, beneficial insects).
Significant environmental benefits
You won’t have to use plastic bags to dispose of your grass clippings and leaves. A plastic bag can take up to 500 years to decompose! That’s a lot of time! In Laval, we’ve recently introduced compost bins (brown bins), which help enormously to counter this problem. Brown bins also help to significantly reduce the overfilling of our landfill sites. Despite the fact that our brown bins represent an improvement for the environment, it’s always more conscientious to weed. Not only for all the other benefits listed above, but also because the trucks transporting the brown bins aren’t exactly environmentally friendly!
What to do for optimal results?
To increase the effectiveness of grasscycling, it may be advisable to change your mower blade to a mulching blade. The purpose of this type of blade is to cut grass clippings into smaller pieces, thus helping to break them down. It will also provide a better aesthetic result.
You can find this type of blade in stores that sell mowers (ex. Canadian Tire, Équipement Laval, R100 sport, etc.) Even simpler, you can find this type of blade on Amazon. Look up the size of your blade by consulting your model on the Internet. Note that to protect themselves, companies never sell already sharpened lawnmower blades. You will need to have your blade sharpened.
Before making any changes to your mower, we strongly recommend that you try it out. Sometimes, even if your mower doesn’t have a mulching blade, it can do a great job!
Thatch (dead grass that we have to scrape off in the spring) and grass clippings left over from grasscycling are not the same thing at all! Thatch should be removed in the spring to avoid problems, while grasscycling offers benefits to your lawn!
If during the grasscycling process, there are still areas where the shredded grass is visible, you can simply go back to that area and it will disappear. In addition, the use of a small blower could be useful (honestly, it is rarely necessary and going over the lawn with the mower does the job).
We have one of our important contacts to refer to you for maintenance and repairs of your mowers!
Christian Auger (514) 862-1904
Christian is our best reference in the field! Just call him and he will take care of your lawnmower problem! Plus, he offers a courteous and affordable service! He can even come and pick up your lawnmower and bring it back to you once it has been repaired.
Note that often, if your mower won’t start, it’s probably something minor like a dirty carburetor. It probably doesn’t need to be completely replaced, and Christian will save you a lot of money. You can also call him to sharpen your new mulching blade and install it.
The whole team thanks you for your confidence and we wish you a great summer!
