Does Denim Work Well As A Mulch?

Thank you for your good information presented concisely. I live at 7 thousand feet in colorado and 30 years ago I started to collect and plant grasses. Every year I move the grasses to other rocky parts of the 3 acres and it has transformed the soil. This year I took a new approach to my 5×5 foot garden beds. I used a plastic 1 1/2 inch pipe that I baried 8 inches deep with small 1 1/16 inch holes drilled in the side of the pipe. I wrapped the underground pipe with a layer of cardboard so my plant roots would not be able to easily plug the watering holes. The cardboard would evenly distribute the water underground. I buried the pipe with a fresh batch of new compost and bark underneath it, the pipe comes out of the ground 6 inches out of the soil on both ends, this constant access of the plant roots to air and water makes the plants grow incredibly well. So when watering I fill the pipe with water for 10 seconds on a 5 foot pipe. The results has been remarkable. The bed is 5×5 foot and needs less water than all the other 5×5 foot beds other beds. The soil is soft and alive. The plants were panted two weeks after the rest of the garden and everything is larger and healthier. Allot less water with allot more produce. The soil stays alive in the hot rocky mountain sun.

We always had a 55 gallon drum in the garden into which we threw the weeds that we had hand pulled or hoed out. We would fill it with water and weeds and stir it up occasionally. Once a week or so we would water the plants with the smelly water. Then we would just keep adding weeds and water all summer. If it got too full of weeds we would knock the drum over and dump it out, leaving it’s contents on the ground to dry out and then spread it as a mulch. All of the nutrients that the weeds took out of the garden were returned to the garden in that solution. Adding grass clippings would also be great.

Thanks for the article! We’ve got a half acre and it’s mostly grass still – just a few raised beds and a small in-ground area. It’s easy for me to sometimes resent the work of cutting grass when I’d rather be growing food, but this helps me connect the two. Will definitely be utilizing grass as a mulch as a direct result of this article.

hi Huw, i agree my geese and ducks eat all mine, but then the poop they make is soooo bril for the garden and veg /fruit beds 🙂 yes i use cardboard also the worms love it 🙂 nice article your subscribers are looking awesome, well done 🙂 i need to increase mine so much well done again Hew and congratulations again from another welsh grower stay safe and grow well ange and the gang @ not just about ducks 🙂

I love this especially as organic gardening can be expensive if you don’t know how to make your own plant food. Please keep bringing us free or cheap ideas to feed our garden. I’ve got some fermented nettle juice following your article from last year and I also intend to use that to feed my plants. It would be interesting to know whether it’s possible to keep the garden going and healthy solely on things we can make ourselves. We all know about compost but there’s only so much of that you can make and you still need some kind of liquid feed so any ideas are very appreciated. With the cost of living crisis being what it is these sorts of ideas can really help feed people. I’d really like to see some very little cost experiments from start to finish for the average Jo that doesn’t have grow lights or a polytunnel. Stuff anyone can do for very little cost. The biggest shock for me my first year was the cost of starting up gardening.

I am 76 years old and while growing up was taught by a number of old people that grass is a highly acidic addition to compost. That is why it is only added in small amounts. Since then in gardens of sizes up to an acre and hayfields as well I have experimented with grass in various quantities and qualities. This includes the restructuring of old gardens and compost heaps of myself and others. I have also viewed at length its effect upon cutting machinery when in for repair. As with the author I would agree grass is acceptable when added little and often to existing compost. The main problems are grass is available to most people in large difficult to dispose quantities – who cuts a quarter of a lawn? Secondly, most compost heaps are disposed in difficult areas of the garden usually shady and in rain shadow; thirdly manufactured compost makers usually deny any natural addition to the compost by being basically upturned buckets. Good compost making that will absorb most garden waste as well as organic kitchen waste starts with a good base. Go and buy some 50p sacks of pony or horse dung with some bedding ands Read that on the ground as a base. This will attract worms who are vital to your cause. Then add layers of compostable items with dirt shaken off but never too deep. Once the first bin is full repeat for second and turn the first I into an empty third. Repeat the dung base as worms only come from the bottom. Later do the same for the second bin. In these circumstances quite large amounts of lawn clip may be consumed but if a large amount is on hand add some more cheap dung and water in dry weather.

This depends very much on what types of grass you have in your lawn. Here in New Zealand many of us have paspalum, twitch, couch and kikuyu grass in our lawns (despite efforts to keep them out). Finer grasses are great to use as mulches, but these others will quickly become invasive weeds in your garden if you use them as a green mulch. Best to compost the clippings if you have these grasses and use the compost as a mulch or else your garden can very quickly be overrun with these grasses which can quickly smother desirable plants. My old garden books (1800 – 1950s) all recommend hanging a sack of composted manure or leaf mold in a barrel of water to create a liquid fertiliser. I guess there would be a similar fermentation process. I have never tried it myself, but May sometime soon. Thanks for the interesting article. Your garden looks very healthy. Keep up the good work.

VERY WELL EXPLAINED HUW! If we don’t FEED and NURTURE the soil… there will be no soil to feed us. If something comes from the soil… it can go back to the soil. How we do our part depends on two things… what our LOCAL soil circumstance/need is and how much EFFORT we are willing to put into nurturing it. My focus is paying it forward for our future generations (like planting fruit trees at 73 years old). Blessings Kiddo!🥰🌻🐛

Hi Huw, thanks for all the info. We bag all our grass clipping here in our garden and put them on the compost. I always try to mix them in so it’s not one big lump. I agree it can be hard to find enough browns for the compost, especially this time of year. And I’ll have to give the grass mulching a try on the veggie beds.

Wow what timing Huw. I have just mowed my 1/2 acre of land, in preparation for laying weed matting, and I literally have a ton of weed and grass clippings. As I don’t have enough “browns” to add it all to my compost bins I was wondering what I could do with it all. Now I know! I will be starting my JADAM tomorrow in my spare oil drums, thanks.

The overhead shot detailing the set up from above is a WOW! moment Mr Richards. A little thing I’ve done in the garden is paint all my wooden beds and fencing British Racing Green. Our heritage colour is BRG and similar tones therein, the foreground, mid ground and backgrounds in nature in Britain are GREEN and any delicate or jazz colours ‘pop’ double. In my opinion the advent of foreign holidays to the mediterranean shores and bringing back with them those awful (in my opinion) brown/copper wood stains and paint, I can’t stand it. The ‘make over’ garden series made by the BBC made it worse, You, young lad are far too young to remember this but this did happen. What you are doing NOW is vital and massively COOL, what a set up you have. ROCK STAR GARDENER …G…

You’re only the 2nd person I’ve seen using grass as a mulch. I started doing it this year after learning from Jim Kovaleski and his ‘grass-fed gardening’ method. He explains how the worms actually pull the grass down into the ground, eat it and then you’re left with rich soil. Just have to keep topping it off as needed. It keeps the weeds out as long as you’ve got a thick enough layer. I’m having great success so far.

Thank you for a good laugh with you on the sheep 😂 I’m curious as how weeds in the lawn might affect the grass clippings. If your small patch of grass is almost more weeds (dandelion in particular), clover and moss; is it still good to use as grass clippings? I’m just wondering if the dandelion leaves and such could be spreading from the leaves as they do from the roots? I like having the dandelions for the bees and pollinators, so I don’t want to remove them. Oh, and I hope you might do more about growing in pots and the like, because I am not allowed to do anything else in my garden. So I have tomatoes, potatoes, peas, squash, beans, asparagus and what not in pots all over the semi-shadowed terrace 😊

You might try putting some of the grass in a blender adding water and blending it up to a green juice would be a great chlorophyll boost before any garden vegetable especially tomatoes with leaves turning yellow my raspberries love it too I give him a boost everyone smile go out and cut the long grasses Twitter about a foot-and-a-half 2 ft long take my Hatchet and cut him up into little half inch to an inch pieces put them all in a barrel filled the barrel with 50 gallons of water and I got some good chlorophyll water to strengthen my plants with. You might try this.

Hi again Huw. I am so glad to hear you promoting grass clippings and it’s uses! There is no one that is going to convince out of using it as I have seen how benificial it is as you describe!! I will be 60yrs old this year and learned from my Grand-Father and a few old faithful gardeners how to use the grass clippings wisely. I have had young friends just parrot out others negative advice about grass clippings, with no practical experience…I just carry on using it. Results speak louder than opinions in my book.

We collect our clippings every other week and add them to our compost pile that is made up of wood chips (chip drop is great), coffee grounds, tea leaves, kitchen scraps, etc. At the end of the season, we dump the pots into the piles. Next season screen the piles for the pots as well as a layer on the gardens. Luckily we have plenty of compost and have been able to top-dress the lawn and no longer fertilize the lawn.

I live in a dry and getting dryer climate. we haven’t even had half an inch of rain this year. our yard is still mostly dead and brown, some grass is coming but not enough to do anything with or even mow. So this year until i have grass I’ve mulched my garden beds with pine shavings. As long as the wind doens’t blow them away they do great at keeping the soil cool and moist

I have clay soil and the bushes and trees I planted in the ground just didn’t do well. I started putting a light layer of lawn on my beds . The response was amazing! I don’t call my lawn grass because it is made up of a number of plants, white clover, wild violets, grass and weeds. I now use this amazing concoction in my vegetable beds. The secret is the light layer which has a chance to dry before I add another one the next week.

When you said that “when it rains the grass clippings capture the water allowing the water to go gently down into the roots”. That is not correct unless you get a huge amount of rain that will drench the soil below the grass clippings. What usually happens is the top layer of the grass clippings get wet but nothing below it gets wet. The water does not go down into the roots. To get that to happen you need to put irrigation pipe or tape below the grass clippings so when you water the garden the water goes down into the roots and the grass clippings on top (which most likely have matted together) prevent evaporation from the soil. What you are saying is not completely correct. Did you check below your grass clippings after you watered them to see if the soil was wet or not? I am guessing not or you would have seen the grass clippings were wet on top but not below in the soil. Of course if you only had a very thin layer of grass clippings it would go down into the soil between the holes in the grass clippings. Still putting grass clipping on your soil is the cheapest cover ever for your garden ( and turns into beautiful soil) but it will give you nitrogen drawdown in the short term so it is not good putting it around root vegetables that are about to fruit or you will get green tops but not root such as with carrots etc. I love grass clippings as a free method of covering your garden with mulch but you do need to consider the matting together of the clippings and thus the lack of water to penetrate the soil unless you poke your hose through the clippings or (as I mentioned) put irrigation pipe or tape below the clippings.

Hi Huw. I garden in my garden in raised beds and containers. I’ve topped all of them including the ones in the GH and PT with my lawn clippings. Our numerous blackbird population is having a great time flinging them all back out again! Oh well, live and let live I guess. If they’re happy I’m happy😁.

I had the foresight late last summer to fill up a 5 gallon bucket with grass and water and put on a lid. It’s overwintered now and about 6 months old with a month at least until I have growing plants to use it on. I forgot about it and just found it and it was like winning on a scratch ticket. My finely aged grass fertilizer for this year, so exciting. I also have a two month out of six month to ferment 5 gallon bucket of fish bones and brown sugar (50/50 by weight) fermenting in my kitchen, (fish amino acid) no odor at all. It’ll last me years as an awesome fish fertilizer and I’m going to the ocean next for my seaweeds for compost and a liquid fertilizer. Opening a box of Miracle Gro just doesn’t have any appeal, plus it kills the life in the soil.

I have used grass as topping in my vegetable garden for years but as my beds increase I got less and less grass (I live a little of grid from parks, church yards and so on). One thing I have a lot of is willov leafs, I have done most of my beds with them, small bransches in the bottom, leafs, cow and chicken menure and sand. Now, if I want to compost the leafs; should I layer them thin in the bing too? I suppose I cold drive my grassklipper over them once or twice first making it easier for them to be decomposed?

and one tends to think has seen it all… thanks for the great article, already using grass cutting as mulch (just fixed the whole greenhouse yesterday…) but the anaerobicly digested organic matter deg jadam method sounds pretty interesting indeed. a bit like biogas fermenter residue or worm compost leak-water. will try today!!!

Thank you for this! Is it equally ok to use grass that has many kinds of other plants growing in it? Your grass has slender, upright, bright green blades. But my ‘lawn’ is full of all kinds of stiff grass that isn’t upright, and it has low-growing green plants here and there. (I’m not experienced in gardening and don’t know the names of the foilage that’s growing among the grass.)

Huw, The way you demonstrate the JLF makes it look anaerobic for sure. Which means methane which we ideally shouldnt be letting just escape into the atmosphere. If you’re producing methane anyways why not just use a proper biodigester to process the grass clippings? You’ll still get your fertiliser tea which was the primary goal… But you’ll also be preventing releasing additional atmospheric methane and capturing it as a secondary benefit!

Love it. But unfortunately, for many of us Americans, our grass that encompasses our lawn is generally sprayed with synthetic chemical fertilizer, weed killer, and pest and insecticide, and using that in our garden would do more harm than good. Thank you landlords.. But this is a great tip nonetheless and I’m sure this system works amazingly well for many that don’t have the aforementioned issue. Would love to have grass that isn’t heavily polluted with chemicals! #downwiththenorms

Hi Huw! Thanks for all the great articles you produce. I’m learning so much. I do have a question about the water to JLF ratio. In this article, you use grass JLF with a ratio of 30:1. In The Magic of Weeds in Water, you’re using various weeds in the JLF with a ratio of 10:1. How do I know what concentration I can use for my particular greens? I have grass, but it isn’t anything like yours & there’s alot of other plant material (weeds) mixed with it.

Huw, if I followed your advice I would end up with a world class weed garden. Perhaps your lawn is 100% lawn grass. That’s swell. Unfortunately, we have what is known as a ‘country lawn’. I.E., a whirl wind of weed seeds where anything grows that wants to. I can’t use my leaves either. Fergit about horse manure. Same thing. Grass clippings + leaves + ashes + saw dust composted and tilled for a good three years is slightly safer.

I have a small garden (12×24), and grow tomatoes, peppers, zucchini and cucumbers, I use aged horse manure and have hay for the horses to put around my plants, is it a good idea to use hay? And how much? I love your articles sir, the weed article dumbfounded me, give back is now my motto for gardening. God bless you and your viewers.

I don’t know what kind of grass you have, but if I used our Bermuda grass clippings in my square foot garden squares, I would be fighting that crap taking over the garden even more than I already am! I ABSOLUTELY HATE BERMUDA GRASS WITH A PASSION! One rhizome clipping can come back to life with watering and take root. We had to lay down concrete between my garden squares, for the pathways, to try to get a little relief from fighting it from taking over…..and still, we have it coming up through seams around the squares and cracks in the concrete. That crap is insidious! Whoever the brilliant person was back hundreds of years ago, that thought it was a great idea to bring Bermuda grass to the United States…..well…..I would love to slap them if I could!

Use my own and mulch a garden section each week for weeds or as compost mixed with free wood chips that my local arborist delivers by the truckload when I call. I don’t import them bc I don’t know how they’ve been treated. I never add any chemicals to my yard, nor have done so for 10+ years, so I know they are safe.

Blah blah blah, on such a serious tone, with appropriate mimics and so on… Well I tried this 2 years ago, then I got SOOOO MUCH grass amongst my vegetables (because grass clip is full of SEEDS, you know…) that I soon was unable to control it, and it grew so closely that my beans couldn’t pollinize at all. Great idea!

I fill pool tubs (that held the tablets) with clippings and weeds and let it rain. This may be peculiar to this area because we get more rain that 95% of the country (Middle TN) but letting that set for days (or get refreshed with new rain) does wonders. Can’t use “grass” due to my refusal to use chemicals to eradicate the “bad” grass.

Grass clippings and empty toilet paper and paper towel rolls is what I use for my compost. I also throw in egg shells, banana peels, and other kitchen scraps that can not be fed to animals. But I don’t use my compost in my garden, because I don’t have much of it in the little compost turning barrel I have, so I use it to plant seedlings in the spring and in my house plants.

In raised beds this year I have so far found one solution against slugs. Pellets work but I wouldn’t use them incase animals ate them and I’m not sure I want the poison in them in my soil, wool works but you have to keep buying it but its not cheap. 2 lines on copper wire about 1cm apart on top of the beds all around the top. They don’t touch and the ends of each one is connected to a positive and the other the negative of a 9 volt battery contained inside a small Tupperware tub and holes sealed with hot glue or silicone. The (electric fence) doesn’t consume power as it doesn’t complete a circuit until a slug or snail crosses the wires and get a harmless shock and they turn back. It a total game changer this year for my veg.

Our lawn man’s boys blew all the tree leaves and sticks into a corner of the yard under a tree instead of cleaning them up last year. When he told them to clean it up I said NO!! Leave it, it’s perfect!! I just left it alone. And told my husband just throw everything he cleans from the yard on top. This year I have a HUGE mulch pile of rich, black, sweet smelling compost full of earth worms!

Have you thought about attaching a valve to the bottom of you JLF vessels so you can easily drain off liquid as needed without the need to scoop it? If you are worried about the valve becoming clogged you can take more technology from your local brewery and either ask them about their mash tun or simply run an inner line branching out with a screen on top separating the line from the plant matter.

Grass clippings in barrel or bucket of non chlorinated water with molasses & airation(aquarium pump) will make fantastic probiotics tea. Let sit for a week, filter & and apply. Use resulting mass as mulch. I also do similar with alpaca poop, produces a very dark probiotics loaded with additional nutrients

I agree that grass clippings are great for your compost pile and used directly on the garden for mulch. But I have to disagree that you can make browns out of them. Even if you dry them in the sun, they still have all the nitrogen (greens) in them. To get browns, they have to dry on the plant. Take leaves for example, when the tree has pulled all the nitrogen out of the leaves in the fall, that’s when they turn brown (browns). Grass would have to turn brown in the yard before mowing to get browns out of them. And it’s not just them changing color, it’s the plant pulling that nitrogen back into the core or roots of the plant that make them browns.

So what’s the deal with going to the effort of only composting “chemical free grass” and then mix it with cardboard which is usually treated with a variety of chemicals? Let’s be practical, can’t we just use whatever grass we have in our garden with cardboard? (That’s aside from the first cut after treating the grass which would be loaded with chemicals.)

I’ve read some very conflicting information about using grass cuttings in the veggie patch or around trees, ie. not to use it as it will burn the plant roots etc. So, when I found my husband had chucked a load of grass cuttings in the new patch that I was about to plant into, I was annoyed and turfed most of that out. I’ll apologise to my husband, as he thought he was doing the right thing, which of course he was. Thanks for all the useful articles Huw.

Nice article as always. I pile grass clippings six feet high and they break down into great compost without any other carbon amendments. The fibrous structure is better for many applications than the granular structure of other composts. The only lawn clippings that tend to turn to sludge are the clovers in the early spring, but I can wash them out in a 100 gallon tub of water and restack them and they’re fine after that. The wash out water makes great fertilizer too.

This is almost the same principle as what people do with home made biogas reactors. Usually they mix kitchen waste (easiest to brake down) with water and cow manure. The last one contains the anaerobic bacteria for making biogas. The gas can be used to run a kitchen stove and the liquid residue is a very strong fertiliser. It contains readily available nutrients and nutrients that are slower released once the organic material further disintegrate.

I will not use grass clippings for one simple reason: contamination. I will not use my own because I have not owned my property for long enough to feel safe about what is there. I also have a hill that could bring runoff from a neighbor who uses petrochemicals, harsh fertilizers, pesticides, and round-up. This is not a good idea for just anyone to use their grass clippings if they are also concerned about these issues. They might should investigate and determine how comfortable they are with what they might be collecting & concentrating into their garden.