Mulching moto mowers do an excellent job of chopping the clippings into small pieces. Even ordinary side-discharge mowers disperse clippings enough to let them lie when you mow at frequent enough intervals.

If you fall behind, you can try to work around the perimeter of the yard, shooting the clips inward so you’ll end up having to rake only one or two channels in the middle. If you go back and forth, shooting first to the right and then to the left, you’ll end up with a channel of clippings every two passes. Avoid cutting the grass when it’s wet. The clippings are more likely to mat together, you won’t get an even cut and you may even compact the soil if it’s wet.

Also don’t attempt to mow when grass is going brown and dormant in a drought, even if you’re mainly doing it because weeds are continuing to grow and are poking up. Grass crowns become brittle and fragile in drought conditions, and if you smash them with your feet and rotary tiller mower wheels, the plants won’t recover when rains return. Dead crowns equal dead grass.

Some people swear by their reel mowers, the ones with the old-fashioned bladed drums that go around and snip off grass blades like scissors. These work great, but so do rotary mowers when they’re kept in good condition.

No matter which style of mower you’re using, the most important thing you can do is keep the blades sharp. Nice, sharp lawn mower blades make a clean cut. Dull blades rip the heads off grass blades and cause ragged edges.

First, that’s a cosmetic problem because rough, ragged cuts make bigger openings that turn brown and stand out more than sharp cuts. But even worse, those bigger openings cause the grass to lose more moisture, which increases drought stress in hot weather. And bigger openings leave grass blades more vulnerable to disease spores.

Sharpening your lawn fertilizer blades once every few years is not enough. Two or three times during the growing season is a better game plan, and even sharpening once every 25 hours is not overkill. Some homeowners own two different lawn mower blades so they always have one for the mower while the other is being sharpened.