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I’m thinking of buying a hand-push lawn mower (reel lawn mower), kind of like the one below.

enter image description here

My yard is small, and I would enjoy the workout. My only concern is, would I need to subsequently rake and collect the grass clippings? Electric lawnmowers automatically gather the clippings in the bag, but this one would sprinkle them all over. My first instinct says this could feed nutrients back into the soil instead of shipping them off to a landfill. Could leaving the clippings behind harm my grass in some unforeseen way? Would I need to remove them?

FYI, the winter here is cold, cloudy, and rainy so I’m not sure if that would play an important part.

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    Unless the clippings are heavy enough to cover/blanket the grass, I would leave them to add the stuff the lawn needs(instead of buying fertilizer). gardening.stackexchange.com might add more information, if you ask there. I never used a bag with any lawn mower. Only time I picked up the grass was when I was making hay.
    – crip659
    Commented Nov 12, 2022 at 20:40
  • they would dry up, provide no nutrition and look terrible
    – DIY75
    Commented Nov 12, 2022 at 20:42
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    Yet another ignorant comment from the usual source of ignorant comments the past several months...
    – Ecnerwal
    Commented Nov 12, 2022 at 20:53
  • @Ecnerwal Sometimes I wish we could downvote comments that are uneducated or downright misleading.
    – M -
    Commented Nov 12, 2022 at 21:18
  • Places I've lived, they have community compost. Some give you a green bin and they come and take it, others you have to drop it off. If I did not have that at my disposal, I absolutely would NOT put them in regular trash for landfill. I would recycle clippings back into the lawn.
    – Harper - Reinstate Monica
    Commented Nov 12, 2022 at 22:13

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If you mow frequently (which is a good idea with these, as they bog down on long grass) the clippings will compost in place.

There are also grass-catcher add-ons widely available for reel mowers. They are simple enough you could make one if you can't easily find one. If you have non-lawn area you can use them as mulch (no thicker than about 2"/50mm) or you can compost them and other things and spread the finished compost on the lawn, rather than shipping them off to a landfill, if you don't have garden areas to use it.

grass catcher example image from dkhardware.com - no endorsement implied

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    See also gardening.stackexchange.com/a/19585/6806 about mulching with them
    – Ecnerwal
    Commented Nov 12, 2022 at 21:54
  • Depends on your location. In Pennsylvania grass clippings composted on the lawn really fast. In New Mexico not so much. 41 inches of rain in PA vs 8 inches…
    – Jon Custer
    Commented Nov 13, 2022 at 1:21
  • I own a mower that was sold with a similar grass-catcher. It did a poor job overall, only catching the cuttings that happened to be thrown directly at the basket (roughly half). I use the mower without a catcher instead now, and have done so happily for the past five years.
    – Kaz
    Commented Nov 13, 2022 at 11:42

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