Never Throw Away Grass Clippings

Gardening Tips : Grass clippings aren’t going away if you have a lawn.

There is so much more you can do with grass-clippings than just throwing them in the garbage. Here are some ideas for you to try in your garden to put that grass to some good-use.


Add to compost

Grass-clippings are a great source of nitrogen and break-down quickly. A proper compost-pile requires a mix of green and brown materials. Freshly cut-grass is considered ‘green’, and so will need to be balanced out by the addition of some brown-material, like dry-leaves, branches, twigs or paper.
When adding fresh grass-clippings, make sure to turn the grass into the pile to enhance aeration and prevent compaction. Microbes will break the pile down quickly and you will have a rich-pile to spread in a short amount of time.

Lawn clipping tea

Liquid organic fertilizers are seemingly more popular year on year in the store, but you can make your own liquid plant feed at home. To brew a lawn-clipping tea, place your freshly cut-grass in a bucket of water and allow to steep. Beneficial nutrients like potassium, nitrogen, phosphorous, chlorophyll and amino-acids will leech from the grass into the water. After 4-days or so, strain off the liquid and use it to feed your plants by pouring onto the roots or spraying on the leaves.

Leave them on the lawn

If you’re striving for a perfect-lawn, you probably remove your grass clippings every time you mow. But you’re actually robbing the grass of certain nutrients that it needs to thrive. In future, leave your short clippings lie, as they will break-down quickly, nourishing the grass and turning it a perfect shade of green. In fact, grass-clippings can add back-up to 25 % of the nutrients that growth removes from soil! These clippings also encourage beneficial microorganisms and earthworms that digest this grass and maintain healthy-soil.

Container mulch

Moisture is always an issue when it comes to Container-Gardening. Containers need a lot of Watering. Add a thick-layer of grass clippings on top of your potting-soil to hold in extra moisture. Grass-clippings either fresh or dried, make an excellent organic mulch which contains high amounts of nitrogen, something all plants need to grow and flourish.

Livestock Feed

If your grass is cut with an electric or hand-push mower, you could use the cut grass to supplement diets of herbivores. I have fond memories of grabbing handfuls to feed the guinea-pig and rabbit as a child and how excited they would get. You would not want to use wet-clippings since they spoil quickly and can make animals sick.

Layer in a raised bed

If you are building a raised-bed or a hugelkultur bed, you can use a thick layer of grass-clippings to provide nutrients and build-up the bed which will use less compost to make up the volume.

The added bonus is that the grass-clippings help to break-down the carbon rich fibrous material in a raised-bed.

These were my 6-uses of grass-clippings.
If you’ve got any other uses of grass-clippings, please share them in the comments below.