Thanks for the reply. Yes, I did buy mulching blades and a cover for the mower. I am thinking that I cut too much off on my first cut when I side discharged. But I figured that the mower would do a better job of chopping up the dead clippings when I went back over it 2 days later with the mulching blades. Maybe mulching only works well when you are cutting a small amount of fresh grass? I mean, it basically did nothing to the clippings on the second try and I ended up having to rake the yard.

I use an environmentally friendly pre-emergent herbicide, corn gluten. It is marketed under several brand names, including WOW (without weeds) and Amaize. I can get it from the feed store, too, but I have to tell them I am using it for livestock feed. Another source is permitted to sell it only to be used as fertilizer (8-0-0). The advantage of the brand name stuff is that it is granulated, and therefore easier to apply if there is any breeze; on the other hand you pay a lot more. The research has been done on this years ago already, at a Midwestern university. Use Google to search. It is totally safe and leaves no toxic residue. You can even eat it!

Nate, it sounds like the following is too late, since your work has already begun, but for what it's worth: We had 4 new roofs (entire house) and everything that that entailed (remove old roofs, put on new + gutters & downspouts) and new stucco siding on one side of the house's addition (hence, remove all old stucco, too). Contractor also created a new profile for the eave over that side of the house; also made and installed a copper overhang for the window on that side. Not all of this was done at the same time; still, a lot of construction materials and debris. Used the same contractor and his small crew for everything. The crew was able to do the roofing job by accessing all the roofs from the patio; the main issue was roof debris that ended up on the ground. They were exceedingly careful and neat but even now, I do find the occasional nail and bits of roofing material. For the stucco work, however, they needed to erect and safely access scaffolding. I asked the contractor to try to protect a daylily bed directly under the side of the house needing that work. For various reasons, I couldn't dig up the plants in it, even though it contained some daylilies I value a lot (eg LAST SNOWFLAKE, NEON FLAMINGO, COWBOY SCARF, MABOU, Jack Carpenter patterns, and more), so he set up the scaffolding on a large piece of plywood that was placed on cinder blocks on either end of the bed (and with two blocks supporting the mid part of the wood). The crew had to access the scaffolding of course, so one end of the bed got badly trampled & the soil very compacted. Even so, given what had to be done to the house, and the time they spent doing it, the daylilies sailed through everything in near perfect condition. There was a lot of bent and torn foliage, but it was late autumn anyway so that didn't matter. Plus, it was the crowns I'd been concerned about. We plan to use the same guys to paint the house's exterior next spring. Since I don't know exactly which month that will be, I expect to have to dig up the entire bed. Even so, I'll ask the contractor to once again place scaffolding on plywood on cinder blocks. The idea will be to protect the soil from compaction so that I can use that bed again as soon as the work is done.

@ken_adrian Adrian No. It's supposed to be grown in 10 - 26 degree celcius temperatures. But I don't know if these values are for the soil or the atmosphere for the leaves. But they have to be stored in a cool dry place though