The Benefits of a Good Mulcher Mower

he Basics of Mulch and Mulching

Mulch is material that is spread around or over a plant in order to enrich the surrounding soil. Thus when we mulch a given plant or area with a professional mulcher mower, we are applying that material to that plant or area. Even when we are using a brush cutter such as Orec’s Cyclone Walk Behind Flail Brush Mower that cuts grass into clippings, we are mulching the area with those grass clippings. It is often said that mulching is integral to keeping your yard and the plants therein healthy, but why exactly is this the case?

Different Types of Mulching Materials

Mulch material can be either organic or inorganic. Inorganic mulches include gravel, plastic sheets and landscape cloths. Organic mulches can be such materials as leaves, hay and straw, pine needles and grass clippings. In general, Organic mulches may give your lawn or garden a more natural look than inorganic mulches and can often provide your soil with more benefits than inorganic mulches. However, some organic mulches may adversely affect your soil (for instance dead leaves are acidic so they can add to your soil’s Ph); these mulches may also act a hiding place for rodents. It is a good idea to research what kind of mulch is right for your area based on your preferences and the climate in which you live.

The Benefits of Mulch

Mulch provides a variety of benefits to your soil and, in turn to the plants and to the grass that you wish to cultivate. Below we talk about just a few of the ways that adding mulch can be a boon to your lawn or garden.

For one thing, mulching is essential to keeping your plants and yard healthy during droughts and in dry summer months. Mulching reduces evaporation from the soil surface, thereby reducing the water that plants require from 25% to 50%. Mulch also helps to stabilize the soil temperature by keeping the soil cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter months. This in turn also helps to stabilize the soil moisture.

What’s more, mulch, specifically organic mulch, is important to maintaining the overall healthy structure of the soil. Organic mulches are quite important to the health of your soil, as they encourage soil microorganism activity which, in turn, improves soil tilth (the soil’s suitability to support plant and more specifically plant root growth) and helps reduce soil compaction (the densification of the soil caused by the application of stress to the soil). Organic mulches also improve the overall structure of the soil: decaying mulch becomes topsoil and this topsoil adds nutrients to the soil. Last but not least, mulch helps reduce the growth of weeds, provided that the mulch itself is free of weeds and is applied down far enough to prevent weed growth and germination.

Use a Good Mulcher Mower to Provide Mulch

Of the organic mulches mentioned above, grass clippings are some of the most beneficial and readily-available—all you need to do is mow your lawn with a brush cutter or mulcher mower! If your lawn has been overridden by tall grass, you can leave the grass clippings on the lawn to help promote healthy soil. In addition the benefits provided by mulches, grass clippings add nutrients to the soil through their rapid decay. A two-inch layer of grass clippings can also provide weed control so long as those clipping do not contain weed seeds.

Orec’s Cyclone Flail Knives rotate from top to bottom, chopping tall grass in mulch.

The benefits of using a mulcher mower to cut tall grass and to provide grass clippings are many, but the question is what kind of brushcutter does the best job of providing that mulch? Many rotary brushcutters, which have a single blade that rotates horizontally, slice the grass into long stems, which are too big to be of much use as mulch. What’s more, these rotary brush mowers often leave blades of grass left standing, which is not only unattractive but is of course useless for mulching purposes. When choosing the right brushcutter, a walk behind flail mower, such as Orec’s Cyclone Walk Behind Flail Brush Mower, can be the perfect option for mulch as its 38 flail blades work in tandem to chop the grass up into fine clippings, without leaving any grass left standing. Such a cut will make it easy for you to spread those clippings around the desired area. It also means that you will only have to go over the area once, saving you time and effort.

So when you use a walk behind brush cutter, such as Orec’s Cyclone Walk Behind Flail Brush Mower, to chop up that tall grass into a fine mulch, be sure to spread it around the area as those grass clippings will keep your soil happy and healthy throughout the year!