Love the grass as mulch idea - as I'm basically lazy and hubby has just strimmed the grass on our absentee neighbour's allotment (nearly as tall as me, all 5' 2"). Our allotment inspector told me not to earth up and I doubted him until I read this thread. He also told me not to bother watering, something about encouraging deeper roots (true?) - mind you he wasn't too impressed that I was about to plant out beans and sweetcorn, muttering about frost and June some 50 years ago