Grass as mulch around young trees?
 

We are about to cut just under an acre of rough grass. We also have an area of woodland which was replanted last autumn. It has almost 200 root-trainer trees/shrubs protected inside forestry rabbit tubes.

Does it make any sense to dump the grass around the tubes? Would it provide nutrients? The grass is waist-high - much of it is hay-like and dry, but there will also be a more lush component. I don't have the facilities to compost that much grass, so I'll need to dump it somewhere anyway.

Thanks

Laura

Hi Laura, you may get differing opinions here but let me add my thoughts !!
Yes, I would use this hay around your trees but not to add nutrients, infact, to the contary, initially it will actually deplete the soil of some of its nutrients in order to break the hay down but personally, I think there are other benefits. Firstly, it will keep the weeds down around your trees and also tend to stop the soil drying out as much. The downside is that as the grass now has set seed, eventually you will get alot of new grass growing in that area ? but that maybe better than weeds ? The bulk of the material will quickly rot down, especially if we get rain !! The speed of this will depend on how your going to cut it as its waist high ??, the more its chopped up, the quicker it will compost ?
Lannerman.

Ive just seen where you live ?? you could ask Gordy Richards if you can dump it in his old quarry Haaaaaaaaaa (top of Pennance Lane)

I should have said - last year I just scattered the grass randomly through the woodland and it 'disappeared' into the undergrowth within six months. I don't have a way of transporting that volume off-site.

We look after a Nature Park which has a wildflower meadow. We need to keep the fertility of the meadow low to reduce competition with the flowers, so have the same problem of getting rid of a huge pile of grass cuttings. We do the same as you are proposing - we dump it in the woodland, where it rots down and disappears.

If the woodland is sufficiently dense that grass isn't growing in it already, then you won't get grass from dumping your cuttings in there.