You made an excellent decision in switching to organic fertilizers. It is normally considered a best practice to mulch mow your grass clippings back into your lawn in order to recycle the nutrients in the clippings. Mulching your clippings should not increase your weed population to any great extent. Cultural practices are most important in quality lawn care. Water deeply but infrequently. If you have a Northern lawn, then cut it long. IÂm sure your Toro is a mulching mower. Typical mulching blades are two bladed (one piece of steel). Only some Lawnboy brand mowers, that I am aware of, have an additional star shaped mulching blade on top of the regular blade. Many discard this extra blade with the first sharpening. Make sure your blade is sharp and IÂm sure your Toro will mulch your clippings quite well. And if by chance your mower is not a mulching mower, Do continue to leave the clippings. Lawn clippings dry up and work their way into the grass pretty quick. Welcome, Kcas72, to the Gardenweb Organic Lawn Care Forum.
Bill Hill

Thanks again for the response Bill. You triggered another question for me. I alway thought infrequent, but deep watering was to water for about 45 minutes, 2x a week. I live in LI,NY by the way. Most people here water about 4 times a week for 20 minutes or so. SO compared to them, I water infrequently. I read somewhere here, don't know who posted it, but someone said once a month for 2 hours. What is the norm? Usually, you always here how inground sprinklers are so important. If I was watering once a month, I would never care about inground sprinklers. What do you think?

Thanks,
Kevin

When you mulch mow clippings are returned to the turf which reduces yard waste and recycles nutrients to your grass.

As for water the general rule of thumb is 3/4-1" of water per week in the middle of summer. But, The best way is to let your lawn tell you when to water.

How Does the Lawn Tell Me When It Needs Water?
As the soil begins to dry out, the lawn will show a lack of available moisture by wilted leaf blades. This condition is evidenced by a lengthwise folding or rolling of the blades, caused by a loss of turgor or water pressure within the plant. Unless rain is forecast in the next 24 hours, lawns should be irrigated with 3/4-1" of water when 30 to 50 percent of the lawn shows signs of wilt. Your objective when irrigating is to get the maximum amount of water to the root zone without over-irrigating.

To determine how long to run your sprinkler system to apply this much water, set out several tuna fish cans around each zone of the sprinkler system and see how long it takes to fill them to the desired depth. Be sure to check your irrigation system for uniform coverage at the same time.

Hey Kevin, Generally speaking, one inch per week including rainfall is recommended. Water one inch, at one time and let your lawn soil dry out between waterings. That causes the roots to grow deep to find moisture thus increasing the drought tolerance of your lawn. This practices also makes it harder for weeds to sprout and thrive since many weeds do best in well-irrigated soils. You donÂt really need in-ground sprinklers. Just move your hose-end sprinkler around after one inch has been achieved as determined by placing a couple tuna cans in the watering area. After awhile, you will know how long in terms of minutes to water an area to yield one inch of water on the lawn. There is some good information in the Organic Lawncare FAQ linked below. Keep reading the gardenweb forums here and you may learn a lot regarding lawn and garden care and feeding. Bill Hill

Here is a link that might be useful: Organic Lawn CAre FAQ

Sorry Scoot, didn't see you in there. BTW, I totally agree with your post.

Great advice above.

The more I watch grass, the more convinced I become that about 90% of having a good yard is mowing as frequently as it needs it to not have more than a third cut off at any one mowing and watering and fertilizing as suggested above.

Not too much, not too little but very CONSISTENTLY.

Do those simple things consistently and most yard problems go away.

I never stick to one inch watering rule anymore these days. I probably water closer to 2 inches each time and I'm able to go as long as 2 weeks between watering during hot summer months.

It greatly depends on the type of soil and climate. For example, my mother's st augustine lawn in Houston, the soil has nice soil with plenty of clay that has been worked on over many years by earthworms and leaf/grass mulching. It rarely ever get supplemental watering. Rainfall is all it gets and it sometimes goes several weeks before they get rain. Clay based soil holds a lot of moisture so you don't really need to water as often.

If you have pure sand soil, unfortunately, you will have to water more often.

My rule of thumb for watering is when 50% of my lawn is wilted, water deeply. Try 1.5 inches and see how long you can go between watering instead of .75-1 inches...

rcnaylor: You have apparently watched and learned carefully (Grasshopper). We say it here all the time but until it happens to YOU, it's only words on the screen. Woodycrest has been saying that for years. He even posts pictures to prove it, but every time he does he gets chased away for his crazy ideas. I mean...when a guy has been taking care of two golf courses organically for five years, you have to listen to him.

The OP said,
The reason I don't leave the clippings is because as with any organic lawn, I do have some weeds throught the yard.

I disagree with that statement. You don't have to have more or less weeds with one lawn care program or another. If you water infrequently the weed seeds cannot sprout. They need continual moisture to sprout. By watering only once a week you interrupt the moisture and the seeds don't sprout. If you mow the grass at the highest setting on your mower, the tall grass will shade any weed seedlings that do sprout, say, from a prolonged period of rain. Most seedlings need full sun to take root, so the tall grass will keep out most of the rest of the weeds. Now there are some weeds that thrive in shade. For the most part those pull out easily. Weeds go away with good care. Your choice of organic or synthetic fertilizer is not part of that equation. The only difference for people willing to use chemical herbicides is they have options for spraying or using granulated products in addition to the option of pulling the weeds. That's a personal issue for you. For me I cannot stomach the idea of using granulated or soil drench type herbicide.

kcas72, the chief reason to bag the clippings is if there are weed seeds present when you mow. The objective is to prevent reseeding of the weeds. This objective can also determine how often you mow. If the weed forms seedheads in 7 days, it may mean that you should mow every 5 days if you do not wish to bag. Cuttings are not a problem.
Mowers mulch clippings by chopping up the clippings that have been 'mowed'. This is achieved by deck design. All chutes are closed and the 'dome' above the blade is enlarged. An updraft is created by the spinning blade which pulls the turf upright for a clean cut and keeps the clippings swirling around for finer chopping before they fall to earth. Some mowers achieve this by using the double blade but in my opinion it is not as effective. Even before mulching mowers became popular, "TORO" had the most efficient bagging system. The lawn had a 'vacuumed look' after mowing and lawn care operators would run their "TORO" on the sidewalk to 'suck up' clippings instead of using a blower. It was all in their deck design which is the important factor in a mulching mower.