Many homeowners believe grass clippings need to be removed to have a healthy, vigorous lawn. However, you can have a beautiful lawn without collecting your grass clippings. In fact, leaving small clippings to decompose and release nutrients back to the soil (a process known as mulching) is better for your lawn than removing clippings. If you remove clippings each time you cut, the lawn can suffer from nutrient deficiency over time, leading to patches of poor growth and competition from unwanted plants like moss.

Some people are concerned that grass clippings cause thatch, which is a layer of undecomposed or partially decomposed grass roots, stems, crowns, runners and lower shoots that build up between the soil surface and living grass shoots. However, this is not the case. Grass clippings contain 80 to 85 percent water and decompose more quickly than other grass plant parts.

A word of caution—A lawn that has a thatch layer that is more than half an inch thick should be dethatched before you begin recycling grass clippings to the lawn. The key to successful mulching is to cut regularly and remove a short length of grass, usually no more than 3cm in each cut.