I know a gardener who uses a thick mulch of grass clippings, mostly on tomato plants. It smothers weeds quit well.

Jim

I use grass clipping around (2inches thick)my tomatoes & blueberries.
I was going to kill the grass in my orchard, but have my son cut it for mulch.
Some say it will tie up Nitrogen, but I never had a problem & have many vegetable with no weeds.

I use it on my entire veggie garden and since I started doing this I have very little weeding to do. You will have to reapply often because it breaks down quickly and then it is actually feeding nitrogen to the plants. I may be wrong but I think it may fix the nitrogen if it is put in your soil.

How does grass clippings do with keeping the weeds away?

Many have been doing it for decades. Some for more than a century.

Dan

It seems to me that my beans actually do much better with grass clippings than any other type of mulch. I've not used clippings on anything else, but am wondering if it would hurt corn to use grass on it, also? We have a big yard and with all this rain the grass is growing like crazy, much more than I need just for the beans, so I figure I might as well make good use of it if it would be beneficial to the corn to do so. (We do not use any chemicals on the yard so I don't have to worry about residual effects.)

Thanks!
Edie

Agree with all above. But, would insert one note of caution. If the clippings have lots of weed seeds in them (or even grass seeds), you could, over time, have those seeds germinating in your garden. Of course, if you continue to mulch, this will be a moot point.

I use them and have very few weeds where I have them. I think with our crappy (non)summer last year, I actually had some success with my peppers and eggplants by keeping the soil warmer with the GCs. I'm not sure, but those 2 kinds of plants were where I put the grass and they were the only ones to thrive! Be sure to keep the clippings a few inches away from the stems of your plant, so you don't burn them.
Why don't you try some with and some without? Let us know. Nancy

An alternative, which sounds promising and I want to try this year is "Green Manure," a cover crop that grows slowly, fixes nitrogen, prevents other weeds from growing and can be grown until next spring, when it can be turned other to add a ton of organic material to your soil.

One recommended crop is Crimson Clover. Add GC now then come hot weather sow the CC.

Mike

I use thick grass clippings over a few layers of newspapers and it works really well to keep weeds away. I don't even pull the weeds first, just layer over them and they die.

Just be careful with weedkillers that might have been used on the grass. My husband was spraying Weed be gone on the front lawn and I told him I didn't want grass clippings from the front since they'd still have some week killer in them.