Who reads that stuff anyway?

Maybe there was something in the owner's manual about mulching wet grass


Owner's manual? What's that?


It's a big ol' book of "information" that gets distributed when you buy a lawnmower...or some other thing. Like most people, I tend to largely ignore these things after looking at the pictures on the back to get the general idea of what to do with the thing.


That's a very sound strategy...how much more information do you really need than what's provided in a picture?


Exactly! Whatever isn't in the picture can be learned through experience, which has long been billed as "The Best Teacher." I gained experience yesterday while mowing the lawn.


Did your lawn mower blow up?


No. My lawn mower has a bagging attachment and a side-discharge chute as well as a Mulch system. I like to leave my mower set to "Mulch" mode primarily because I'm lazy and don't feel like hauling grass clippings around. Plus, it's better for the lawn or some other excuse I'm going to make up to sound less lazy. Most times, it works great and leaves me with a green, healthy lawn. (Okay, most of it is healthy weeds, but they still look green after mowing, so that's good enough) Yesterday, I learned the limitations of the Mulch system...it doesn't like mulching wet grass.

See, it's been raining pretty much non-stop all summer here which causes the lawn to grow at an alarming rate (the fact that it's 75% weeds probably doesn't help either) and also leaves very few windows during which to mow. Yesterday was one of those opportunities, so I had to take it, despite the non-optimal conditions. Here's how the mulcher works:

It mows the grass like normal, but leaves the clippings no place to go when they're done being cut...so instead they bounce around inside the deck until they get ground up into little bitty pieces which then settle down with the rest of the grass. Problem is, when the grass is a little wet, the clippings stick themselves to the top of the deck and stay there until the deck becomes full of leftover crap. This throws the blade out of balance and makes the mower loud and shaky...and probably a little dangerous. Here comes Jeremy with his little garden shovel scraping the grassy sediment from the deck (Yes, I shut the mower off first..though I did burn my arm on the engine's exhaust port once) every 3 minutes, creating a pile of wet sticky grass clippings in the back yard. At least I put it to good use, mulching the little hill at the back of the yard that's nothing but dirt and rocks. Who knows, maybe some new grass will start to grow there. Silver lining!