Excellent video, I've done this before and it's like premium high quality hay. And if it drys enough you can store it in garage cans for a year or more. I do this so in the winter I can refresh my hen laying boxes with soft bedding that will keep the eggs from getting muddy..if you can keep them from eating it, they love it.
Your garden is an inspiration to me! I am also a gardener and RU-vid creator like you! I have so much to learn about gardening and I appreciate your tips, tricks and advice! Please Keep sharing! I hope we can learn more about gardening from each other.
I bag it off the mower and use it green. I'm careful to not let it pile on tomato stems and other plants. Seems to work good for us. Green grass seems to make a nice weed barrier matt that dry hay or straw doesn't. If you use green grass don't leave it in a pile to long before you spread it cause it gets smoking hot.
I just divide the yard into small sections. Cut one section at a time, using the bagger, then spread the clippings out on the cardboard I'm using to make walkways. When I need some, I grab it.
I mow in a square from outside in blowing the grass towards the center. That way I cut it several times so it breaks down faster. Then it's not hard to rake up and bag it.
Have you tried using a scythe to harvest the grass for mulch? That’s what I use when making mulch for the garden. The amount of biomass that I can get from a small area is insane.
Definitely be wary of using straw as a mulch for your vegetable garden. I've killed a few tomatoes with bad straw as well. It's fairly common for commercial straw to have herbicides that affect non-grass plants in them. Sometimes this can be useful, like when seeding a lawn, but it can have terrible effects on non-grass plants you want, like tomatos. That doesn't mean you have to avoid all commercial mulches, though. There are plenty of types of mulch out there with different uses, and the vast majority are safe. For instance, I've used commercially bagged shredded hardwood mulch in flower beds for many years because it breaks down relatively quickly with the help of fungi to increase soil fertility over time, and have never had a problem. The only times I've ever encountered herbicide where it shouldn't be is in that straw I tried, and some cheap potting soil that I can't remember the name of. That being said, your grass mulch is more nutrient dense and will break down very quickly, which can be good and bad, and is one of the most easily available and useful organic gardening ingredients.
I do the same with grass, here in our Montreal suburbia garden. It is by far my favorite mulch! Question : let say you've harvested more than you need . How would you go about storing the grass for the coming weeks?
I never harvest more than I need. But if I did, I'd pack the extra into big trash bags. I do that with dry, shredded leaves in the fall. Thanks for the comment.
I use it right away as a mulch. If I had an excess, I would push it under the plastic around each minibed. It would break down there and feed the microherd. 👍
No. There are weed seeds among the grass, but my Minibeds are heavily mulched. Seeds in the soil are not an issue with heavily mulched beds. The beds have bazillions of weed seeds in them already. Thanks for the question.
Can you make a video about where to buy good quality shovels and hoes? The ones I have purchased at our local hardware store have been of very poor quality. I don't really know what to look for in these tools, or what price I should expect to pay to aquire quality tools.
