Here’s a little secret—just between us.
If you’re paying a landscaping crew to mow your lawn every week and then blow the clippings away, you might as well pay a roofer to punch a hole in your roof—then pay them again to fix it.
I’m no landscaper, so take this as neighborly advice. But after decades of hands-on experience, reading, courses, and chats with experts, here’s what I’ve learned:
Mowing your lawn every week within an inch of its life makes your grass sicker, weaker, and in greater need of synthetic inputs like weed killer and fertilizer. Think about it. A two inch blade of grass can’t grow deep roots because it hardly has any surface area for photosynthesis. That means less water and nutrient retention, more stress, and a lawn that’s hooked on intensive watering, fertilizer, reseeding, and weed killer.
But let it grow to 4 inches, and your grass grows deeper roots. That means better drought resistance and less need for irrigation, better nutrient retention and less need for chemical fertilizers, and fewer weeds—thanks to taller blades shading the soil.
Now, if your crew finishes by blasting your grass clippings away with a leaf blower, you’re literally blowing your money away at 250 m.p.h. Those clippings are green gold. Left in place, they break down within a week or two, returning nutrients to the soil and feeding your lawn naturally.
Nothing could be more counterproductive than paying someone to strip away those nutrients—only to pay them again to replace them with chemical fertilizers.
Wondering why your lawn care company hasn’t told you this? Maybe the green they’re earning from all of this unnecessary work is getting in the way of the green they’re treating.
But don’t just take my word for it—look it up.
Svetlana Wasserman
