I was told recently that I should not put lawn clippings on the soil
since they 'take away the nitrogen'. I can't see why and I would have
thought any greenstuff put back into the soil is a good thing. Any
comments?

On Tue, 19 Aug 2008 20:10:48 +1000, Erik Vastmasd
wrote:

On Tue, 19 Aug 2008 01:08:18 -0700 (PDT),when reading "rec.gardens", I'm
certain I caught a glimpse of "Pete L "
saying:

I was told recently that I should not put lawn clippings on the soil
since they 'take away the nitrogen'. I can't see why and I would have
thought any greenstuff put back into the soil is a good thing. Any
comments?

I'd rather see lawn clippings first added to a compost bin or compost
heap together with other garden cuttings, vegetable peelings etc.

When it finishes composting you then have an excellent product to add to
your garden.


That would be ideal, of course, as a soil additive, but the usual
purpose of using grass clippings, especially in a vegetable garden is
as mulch, not soil enrichment, although the mulch can certainly be
turned in at the end of the season and used for enrichment.

As long as there are no weed killers/preventers on the clippings, they
work quite well as vegetable garden mulch.

They can be used to mulch elsewhere, too, but they are not
particularly attractive.

Boron