Underhill's Mulching & Compost Tips

Mulching your beds will provide a number of very important benefits for your garden:

Moisture retention - Mulching will reduce moisture evaporation from the soil, leaving more water for your plants to utilize.
Cooler Soil Temperature - This proves to be very important during the hottest days of the summer. A mulched garden bed will be 10 to 15 degrees cooler than one without mulch. Much easier on your plants' root system.
Reduced Maintenance - Mulching will reduce or eliminate grass and weed growth within your gardens, thereby knocking one weekend chore off the list.
Improved Appearance - Mulch looks good in your bed!

Mulching Lawn Mowers utilize modern designs in both the actual cutting blade, and the shape of the deck where the blades rotate. The blades actually have two or three cutting edges which will be more effective to "chop up" those grass clippings finer than conventional blades. The contour design of the underside of the deck is such that the grass clippings will "fly" around underneath for a longer period of time before being spit out the side. This allows the multi-edged blades more time to do their chopping.

What you get is a much finer grass clipping that may reduce or eliminate your need to rake up after cutting the lawn. Furthermore, these fine clippings will easily decompose in a very short period of time - before your next cutting. And contrary to popular belief, these clippings will not contribute to an increase in the thatch layer - provided the clippings are chopped fine enough.

Composting is the process of natural decomposition of organic material via microbial activity. When you place vegetable scraps, leaves or other garden wastes in your compost heap, the tiny little microbes will work away breaking these organic materials down into a fantastic soil conditioner that you can use in your garden or for your house plants. Be sure to regular stir up your compost pile, to allow more oxygen to the middle of the pile, or the process will be much too slow. Do not use a large amount of grass clippings in your composter - they will "rot" before they decompose unless you mix them thoroughly with some leaves, soil or other material.