A common myth about grass clippings is that they need to be picked up to avoid thatch, fungus, and disease in lawns. In this FAQ, Robin Miller discusses how modern mulching mowers are able to avoid this problem.

Video Transcription

Since the 40s and the 50s, we’ve been told that you need to pick up all those grass clippings in your lawn while you’re cutting. Otherwise you’ll get horrible things like thatch and fungus and diseases and all kinds of horrible stuff. We’ll, we’ve discovered that it’s really not true.

The new modern lawn mowers that we have nowadays will chop up and mulch the clippings so fine that they get hidden down in the standing turf. And they decompose quickly and you don’t have to pick up those grass clippings for the most part.

There’s a couple of small exceptions to that. Like if you’re cutting warm season grasses like Bermuda grass really short. Less than an inch. You should probably put on a grass catcher because there’s just no room to hide the clippings.

But in all the common lawns in our area around here, we have nice tall grass that takes a nice flattop cut and there’s plenty of room in the grass to hide the clippings.