The message
from "David W.E. Roberts" contains these words:

"You can never have too much/many grass clippings."

Mr Picky says 'yes you can have too much/many'.

With all due respect
There seems to be an assumption in some quarters that all contributors to
this NG have massive borders for growing stuff in, which are always crying
out for extra mulch, manure, feeding etc. which cannot be supplied from the
huge compost heaps constantly digesting plant material.
Witness the comments about bringing in neighbours grass clippings.
[BTW shouldn't these neighbours be composting their grass cuttings and
mulching their own borders?]

They employ a mowing contractor because they are either very old and
frail, absent second-home owners, or frantically busy with tourist
guests almost 24 hours a day during the lawnmowing season.

I've lost one of my grass-contributors this year. He's so amazed at
what his cuttings did to my garden, he's decided to do the same in his
own. He has no difficulty at all using up all his cuttings.

Not all gardens have a large border+compost heap to lawn ratio.
Perhaps you should merely state "In my particular garden, I can't get enough
grass clippings".

I think most sensible readers would take that as read, but YMMV.


/With all due respect

With respect, you have no idea of the ratio of lawn to bed/compost
heap in my garden, and have made a wrong assumption. ATM I've got more
lawn than beds, same as you.

For low maintenance it is good to have a large lawn (requires mowing but not
much else) and shrub borders which require occasional pruning and not much
else.

Grandmothers and eggs come to mind. One of the huge benefits of
permanent mulches, is to create a low maintenance garden at minimal
cost. Vegetable mulch smothers many weeds and prevent their seeds
germinating; it creates rich soil in which plants grow healthy and
strong so they don't need chemical feeds and sprays, and it conserves
moisture so watering isn't necessary.

In the past I have converted borders to lawn because I didn't have the time
to weed them and the garden looked a mess.
Now I have more time, but I have not reached the stage of ripping up the
lawn to enlarge the beds.

There's no need for all that hard labour, "ripping up lawn" to make
beds. I made many of mine by laying mulch on top of lawn, a highly
effective low-input, low maintenance way. I only do it your way when
I've run out of mulch material.

Grass as a mulch takes a long time to break down

Not in my experience.The speed of its breakdown is the reason I can
never get enough. Together with the other mulches I use it creates
intense worm activity. As the worms start working, blackbirds and
thrushes move in to hunt them, and constantly stir the mulch around
which helps it break down into a dark friable humus. The three-inch
surface mulch of grass cuttings I applied yesterday will be brown in a
week and within a month will be unrecognisable as grass.

So in two to three weeks I have covered all
available space in the borders, and if I keep adding more layers it gets
unsightly and does not break down well - going to 'green slime' mode.

Never had "green slime" mode, even though I live in a high-rainfall area.

As stated elsewhere one mowing can fill a brown wheelie bin, which is
emptied once every two weeks, so in the spring and early summer the mowings
are being produced faster than the council can take them away.
I have just installed my trial 'builders bag' compost heap in one corner
where it will be mainly concealed by shrubs (a white bag is not a pretty
feature) and this is already 1/3 to 1/2 full. It is not going to swallow all
my clippings plus other material and compost it all down faster than I can
produce new clippings.
I expect it to be full within 6-8 weeks.
We shall see :-)

I think you'll find that the heat generated by that volume of grass
will shrink it fast, but additions will tend to press down and make it
very dense; anaerobic decomposition doesn't make good compost. Mixing
crumpled cardboard cartons in with the grass will keep enough air in it;
if you have any wood ash to scatter, that's a good additive. If the bag
has a bottom in it, that will slow composting considerably.

So if your garden is reasonably large, and you don't have the time (or the
gardener) to maintain large borders, and you don't have the desire (or the
money) for large scale 'hard landscaping' then you may well end up with a
garden which is mostly lawn, and which can produce mowings faster than the
borders can consume them.

Disposing of them in a constructive manner (not just in bin bags to create
methane in a landfill) is a serious problem.

Quite; so let's hope more people will try mulching with grass cuttings
for themselves.

Janet