Mulching Issue

Hi,

My lawn is new this year laid in March and I have been trying to cut it twice a week with my Mulching lawn mower. Unfortunately about 6 weeks ago I didn't cut it for over a week and when I cut it not all the grass was mulched unsurprisingly. A lot of grass was left on the lawn which I had to rake up.

However, every time I cut now it is leaving lines of dead grass. All I can imagine is that the mower is churning up dead grass that I didn't rake up. However the issue is it is impossible to get up all the grass by raking. Plus its 300m so its not a quick job either.

I don't believe there is an issue with the mower since it was cutting fine before I left the grass too long. I am now considering getting a bagged mower because I don't have time to pick grass up and I am not enjoying looking at lots of dead grass.

Is there any way to get out of this cycle?

Thanks
Alex

 

Welcome to Gardeners Corner Alex.

I know very little about mulching lawnmowers so have just googled for some information. I suspect that you have to mow very regularly or it leaves you in the situation you're in now. To a certain degree mulching a lawn is not a bad idea if the cuttings are kept to a minimum but beyond that it's going to create problems with build up and in turn start to damage the lawn.

To be honest I think the inconvenience of this mower outweighs the organic advantage of mulching and I think you will eventually find that the mulching promotes weeds. I would buy an ordinary lawnmower, but not a hover mower which mulches and abandon the mulcher. I would then mow the lawn starting with a fairly high cut adjustment, leave it a couple of days to recover then lower the cut and mow the lawn in the opposite direction. Up and down the length for one cut and across the lawn for the next. In fact this is always how I mow my lawns. You can then reduce the height of the cut until it's where you would like it to be. I think with this process your lawn will return to normal.