Yesterday a thin layer of moisture-laden haze hung everywhere and amplified the suns rays like a lens, making moving the gun-room a bigger chore – plus the AT&T guy had to search high and low for two undamaged wires that could connect to the handset and provide a dial-tone. Great guy with a lot of local knowledge since he’s from HERE and not Bangalore – or Massachusetts, or Florida – same as the Cable Guy who happens to be married to the cousin of our realtor’s husband. And the Fort Knox guy is just down the street.
Apparently we live next to the old drive-in movie – which is where my neighbors pasture themselves. We also have wild turkeys who peck through the tall grass.
Do I really need a sweeper attachment for the mower, or should the cut grass (and weeds and other unidentifiable plant-a-zoidal fluffy crap) lay organically fallow? Is fallow the right word?
Not Clauswitz 
Unplanted or just plowed but not planted, or not used is the definition, so close enough. Problem is weeds will take over if you’re not careful.
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It’s all prairie-stuff and weeds mostly, calling it “grass” is simply a generality! It’s years away from anything you could call a “lawn.”
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I would mulch the grass. It is only a problem if you let it get REALLY high. Like 8 inches high.
I try to keep mine short. if you only cut the top off the grass, you convince it to expend energy on the roots. If you gut the grass in half or better (may be less than that) then you convince it to grow more leafy green stuff.
If you can get an actual mulching blade, so much the better. They don’t make mulchers for zero-turns. Not that I have a zero turn mower – they are crazy expensive. Stay away from the Home Depot/Lowes/etc brands. Even the cheap John D. are just cheap. A real, entry-level, zero-turn mower is about 4 grand. And it does exactly 1 thing – cut grass.
I have a traditional lawn tractor – though it is the largest I could find. 54 inch cutting deck from Husqvarna. (Lowes). Letting the clippings lay is OK as long as I don’t let the grass get too high. Then I have thatch.
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I have an Ariens 42″ riding mower and an acre of “prairie” to cut. Some small portion of that is recognizable as “grass,” but not anything like Kentucky Blue grass or any sort of “tame” fescue or anything done on-purpose- it’s just green growy-stuff that is smaller than a tree. Much of it is about waist-high in places now. 🙂
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If your mower does not concentrate the grass then it should be fine. Mulching mowers and reel mowers will leave the grass lay where it is cut, which is ideal for bag-skipping. Most bagging mowers will throw the grass to one place, which will pile up the grass, which can be a problem. I used to solve this problem by mowing in circles so that grass was blown out away from the center, rather than in towards the middle. This will semi spread the grass but not very neatly or evenly. You can get away with leaving the grass lay for a long, long time. But eventually you may need to de-thatch or hard-rake to get old grass off the lawn, you can choke out the grass over time.
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I think it just cuts it and spits it out the right side. The instruction manual says that the “close-cut” is on the left side, and to ride a clockwise (sorta) circuit or something… I didn’t want to start-up a racket this AM at 7:00 since it’s Saturday so I will start on The Jungle on Monday when people are up and about early…
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