The Best Mulching Mower Blades

Mulching mowers take blades of grass, cuts them, sucks them into a chamber and continues chopping until the blades are reduced to tiny pieces. The grass pieces are allowed to fall back to the ground. A mulching mower doesn't actually create mulch, which acts as an insulation for plants. Instead, it acts as a composting device, which contributes to fertilizer in the lawn.

Mulching blades often aim at lower parts of the grass so that the clippings get worked into the bottom of the soil, where the clippings can fall onto the soil and become a part of the nutrients. Other mulching mowers create grass clippings that sit on top of the grass, not contributing to the soil's nutrients. These kinds of mulching mowers are much less useful.

Some mulching mower blades, like the Gator mulcher, lift the grass up so that the mulcher gives the grass a cleaner cut. This not only makes the grass bits more useful as compost, but also makes the mulching blades useful for bagging when homeowners use regular lawn mowers, since the blades create cleaner grass clippings and also create smaller quantities of clippings, so that homeowners do not have to make as many trips when dispensing them. The teeth on the blades redirect the air flow, pushing the grass back on to the cutting edges. Other teeth create larger grass clippings by redirecting the grass back to the cutting edge. These mulching blades work better on lawn mowers with multi-stage decks than with other kinds of mulching mowers. These blades perform the best when they're working on 1/2-inch to 1-inch blades of grass. These blades use high carbon steel.

Some mulching mower blades have multi-edges. These edges let the blades cut the grass at different angles, which allows the mowers to cut the grass into smaller and finer pieces.

Some leaf mulching blades cut up leaves, allowing homeowners to use their fallen leaves as compost instead of simply bagging the fallen leaves. This makes lawn maintenance easier by allowing the homeowner to rake up fewer leaves. However, the leaves do not have as much nutritive value as the grass clippings, so the homeowners should not compost leaves as often as grass composting.

Mulching blades with kickers or tails help kick the grass clippings up even higher in the mulching chamber. These features work in combination with the general suction that brings the grass clippings into the chamber so that they can be cut and recut over and over again.