I'm paying attention to this Q.
I have a very simular situation.
Hope somebody smart comes along.

Buy a goat?

Drying is the only way I know. Can't recall off the top of my head the moisture content the alfalfa had to get down to before we baled it but it took a couple of days in a windrow. Spread out on a driveway in the sun, I'd imagine grass would dry out fairly quick. Never done it though.

Lloyd

Hi Lloyd,
I don't own a baler, can i put it in garbage bags.
you know what even if you can, I think I'll just do it the other way.
save even more leave this fall dump in all the greens when they come.
Why should we buy a goat do they save greens? LOL
Laura

Killerbs,
we have to keep waiting Jk

I can spread it in a layer on the bare spots in the lawn then rake it back up into a pile, I suppose.

We use a mulching mower to put the clippings back into our own lawn, but the neighbor used to put his at the road for town pickup so I asked him for them. But I've got the entire garden mulched nicely and I'm running out of leaves. LOL

He gardens, but he doesn't make compost or use mulch.

Isn't that silly?

don't tell him thou or you'll mess up your cool deal.
I'm the lawn mower/ forrest gump. certain parts I let grow long just to get good clippings.
Yes I know I'm greedy. but I've found that it all rots.

stinks, but rots. and turns into compost for my gardens.
soon enough I'll have way too many leaves.
Laura

Missed the part about somebody smart coming along, boy did I goof eh?

Lloyd

Don't till fresh grass clippings into the soil. No, don't do it. Using them as a mulch is a very different thing, but don't till them into the garden bed - unless you are going to till it in today and let the garden sit empty till you plant next spring. The reason is this: Fresh (anything) needs to be broken down by the microbes. The microbes need energy in order to eat and digest the organic material. If you till in a lot of fresh grass clippings into the soil you are going to overwhelm the current number of microbes causing a significant spike in their numbers. The existing microbial life doesn't say, "We will get to that stuff just as soon as we are finished with this stuff". They make more microbes to help process the increase in fresh organic matter that has been put in the garden. This will result in a loss of the soil's fertility because the microbes will start taking the NPK you have provided for the plants for themselves - they gotta eat in order to do their job of decomposing all the new stuff. You would be better off getting some chicken wire and some straw or sawdust. Make a 2 1/2' diameter circle out of the chicken wire and then dump the grass clippings and straw/sawdust into this container. A bale of straw or sawdust is cheap. Remember, the same NPK you want for the plants is also what the microbes use for their food. You do not want to spike the bacterial population causing your plants to have to compete wth the microbes for food. Don't try to overcompensate by putting in extra fertilizer. You have no way to monitor the level of microbial life in the soil. Like I said earlier, unless your garden plot is going to sit empty for six months or so, the only kind of organic material that should be put into your garden is fully composted organic material.

Mulching is different. You can have a 10" layer of grass clippings spread out over the garden as a mulch and the only microbial activity will be where the grass clippings are actually touching the soil. As the microbes decompose the clippings that are in direct contact with the soil, the clippings above drop and become the new layer of organic material for the microbes to decompose. It is like if you sat down to have a wonderful dinner only to find 50 relatives suddenly come over for dinner saying, "Don't go make something, we will share what you have right here". I gotta say here that a 10" layer of grass clippings would also be problematic as well. A layer of grass clippings that thick would begin to compost on its own which would generate a signficant amount of heat which would find its way into the soil. You do not want to heat up the soil during the summer, late winter/early spring perhaps but not now.

Tom

Tom,
can we (I) just keep piling it up? Lets say 4ft of grass clippings in my compost of course.
Laura
Lloyd,
hahaha
I was just kidding. :)
Laura

Find some more browns mabye paper or cardboard and fire up another pile
I had the same issue with a trailer load of maunure and no leaves left I used boxes and paper its nice and hot a few days later..

The best place to "store" grass clippings, or any other organic matter, is on your garden as mulch. If you wish to store those grass clippings you will need to spread them out relatively thinly and allow them to dry, just as hay is dried.

@avid hiker,

I can't compost them because, as I said, I am out of leaves. I do not buy garbage -- straw, sawdust, etc for use only as compost. Buying stuff on purpose to throw it away is silly.

Tilling in a reasonable amount of fresh grass works just fine in this climate and soil (pure, white, quartz sand). Organic material doesn't stick around for 6 weeks, much less 6 months. I just use a little finished compost in the planting zone and by the time the roots reach the rest of the soil the nitrogen hungry phase is over.

If I worked in an excessive amount of fresh grass I'd have problems, but the point of asking how to store the stuff is that I don't intend to add an excessive amount. :-)

Buying carbons as a regular habit would become expensive very fast, but if you must balance your nitrogen or reject your neighbor's grass clippings when they aren't convenient (in which case he might not ever dump any more of them over the fence), you can:

Tear up your newspaper & collect used newspaper from your neighbors & from the trash bags you'll find at the curb the night before trash day.

Collect office paper from places that shred a lot of it-
attorney firms, CPA offices, etc.

Find a cabinet shop or woodworking hobbyist & collect the sawdust (I do this, & it breaks down beautifully!)

You can also post a "wanted" on your local freecycle or craigslist for carbons/browns.

In the name of cost savings and environmental friendliness we read our news online and DH runs as close to a paperless office as possible. I get a small wastebasket of shredded junkmail every couple weeks and an occasional advertising paper (maybe 6-8 sheets), to shred by hand.

I am most certainly NOT going to open the neighbors' trash cans, untie their bags and start digging through the slime! Be reasonable, people.

I asked about means of storing the summer's abundance of clippings so as to make good use of them with the coming, fall abundance of leaves.

Spreading them out to dry then making piles is sensible. Neither buying stuff specifically to throw it out nor tearing into people's trash like a starving, stray dog is sensible.

Killerbs,

I'm in the same boat.
I've decided to cold compost all my greens till the great abondence of leaves.
It will compost eventually.
I will think of it as my sub pile.
Or start a new pile when the leaves come.
But by no means should you turn away those clippings.
IMHO
Laura

I love your name.
SNL was never the same (sigh).
Laura

One thing I found many years ago was that organic matter tilled into sand was digested really fast, but if I piled the same amount of OM on top of that sand as mulch the soil bacteria worked it into the soil for me and it lasted longer and the amount of OM in the soil (humus) actually increased, and that is one reason why I stopped tilling.

Sure you can just let it pile up. If the pile gets big enough it could get a bit stinky. But I have had piles of grass that were two feet high and 4 feet long sit there for weeks until I had enoug brown material to combine with it. Depending on how hot it is, even after a couple of weeks you might find that even thought the top two or three inches is all dried up under that layer the rest of the grass is as fresh as the day it was cut. But if it is at all warm in your area the grass is going to begin to break down and will more than likely begin to turn into a clump of goo. One of my neighbors saves his clippings for me in his big green yard waste barrel. It took me four days before I had a chance to get it into my yard. By then the clippings had begun to compost and when I tried to get it out of the barrel I had heavy clumps of hot green wet stuff that was quickly becoming goo. A few more days and I would have had to use a shovel to get it out. The nice thing though, is that after a few days it dried out and I was able to spread it out as part of the mulch I use on the garden. I don't know how much a bale of straw or a large bag of sawdust cost, but it is not very much. You could just add that and be done with it. Grass breaks down pretty fast. And because sawdust is so thin it makes the perfect brown for grass. Shredded newspaper is good too. But I agree with iam3killerbs, I am not going to rummage through anyone's trash looking for whatever. If the pile of grass gets too big just tell the neighbor to stop sending it over until you have the other stuff you need to make the pile right. My neighbors understand when I tell them I don't need anything from time to time. But they always ask me how the tomatoes are coming along. They are always ready to give me their clippings because I share lots of tomatoes with them.

Like you, my problem is brown material. I only have just so many leaves, cardborard or newspaper. In fact I too stopped getting the paper, partly because I feel they are too biased in the way they report, but also because I just don't have the time to sit and read it. I have so many other things to do than read the paper. In the middle of the summer when everyone's grass is growing like crazy I have often not needed anything for a long time. Otherwise I just get a mess that I have to clean up.

Tom

Why not go to the store and get the browns you need for free? Most stores just throw away all the cardboard and paper in the trash.

Lloyd, "Drying is the only way I know. Can't recall off the top of my head the moisture content the alfalfa had to get down to before we baled it but it took a couple of days in a windrow."

Around here 14% is the magic number for 'falfa.
Don't know whether that applies to grass clipping storage.

One thing certain with either, if it's too high mold will grow.

Fortunately, my DH buys the idea that spreading the grass clippings thinly to dry for a few days on an area of the ground where the grass is patchy will add beneficial nutrients to that area since I will, of course, miss some clippings as I rake it up each time.

The Lumina pumpkins invaded my compost pile space so I'll have to find somewhere new to keep the dried clippings.