Cub Cadet Mulching Blade Kit Review

Cub Cadet Mulching Blade Kit with Plug

A mulching blade kit is a must! We have trees. With leaves. Lots and lots of leaves – tons of leaves. Probably 20 bags of leaves each week during the fall. It’s ridiculously crazy. We raked them up the first year we were in our new house, this year – not a chance!

Cub Cadet Mulching Blades

We invested about $60 and got ourselves the mulching kit for our Cub Cadet 1040 riding mower. It’s one of the best investments we’ve made! If you want to save your back and your weekends, get a mulching kit!

I installed the mulching kit myself. It consisted of two blades and a plug. To install the Cub Cadet Mulching Blades, follow the instructions in your owners manual (you may need to borrow a torque wrench from a friend if you don’t have one) and install them like you would regular blades.

Cub Cadet with Mulching Blade Kit – Before

Cub Cadet Mulching Blade Kit Before with Leaves

First trip around the Crabapple Tree

Mulch Kit Mulching Blade Kit in progress

Cub Cadet with Mulching Blade Kit – After

Cub Cadet Mulching Blade Kit After Mulching

The Cub Cadet Mulching Plug prevents leaves from escaping out of the side chute, instead it keeps the leaf (and grass) clippings inside the mower deck and re-cuts them until they fly out. I did a little modification to the plug as recommended by reviewers. I’ll show you these easy but important modification at the bottom of this page.

The Cub Cadet Mulching Blade kit does a great job. It doesn’t make every little bit vanish, but it chops the leaves up good so they’ll quickly biodegrade. It kind of reminded me of fish food. You know, the flake type fish food – that’s what it looks like once you run over the leaves with your mulcher.

Below is the back yard… I think this is some sort of a red maple tree, perhaps a Norway Maple? The leaves are really dark, dark red. We also have a huge line of trees (off in the background) that litter the ground and a section way down behind our house that fills up with millions of leaves each week during fall… I’m so happy we got a mulching kit!

Before Mulching

Cub Cadet Mulching Blade Kit Before Mulching

After Mulching

Cub Cadet Mulching Blade Kit After Leaves

As you can see by the pictures, the Cub Cadet Mulching Blades do a great job. It chops leaves up into tiny pieces and puts them back down on the ground to biodegrade. It’s really good for your lawn too. It’s a natural fertilizer, and your lawn will be more healthy and grow in better year after year when you mulch instead of rake!

Cub Cadet Mulching Plug Fix

A lot of complaints arise about the Cub Cadet Mulching Plug. I can see why. it’s not designed to stay on very well. I know that if I did not make the ‘fix’ before using it, it would have come off – and likely ended up being chopped up by the blade. The fix is really simple.

To fix the Cub Cadet Mulching Plug, drill 4 holes along the bottom of the plug (make sure they’re in a spot where you can use zip-ties around the frame of the mower deck. Then 1 more hole at the top left which corresponds to the hole in the mower deck. Attach the bolt as instructed in the mulch kit installation guide, then use the zip ties to attach the mulch plug and then stretch the rubber belt thing over the bolt and you’re done. Make sure to check the ties regularly as I had a few ties break off – good thing they’re cheap!

Cub Cadet Mulching Plug

I took the chute off for installation, but you can keep the mower chute on – I wanted to get a good pictures for you. It is a good idea to keep the chute in it’s place, in case the plug does come off somehow, the blades wont be exposed, and the mower chute will help prevent shards of plastic from flying up at you. The mower chute will also help guide you from going too close to trees or other objects and catching your mower deck on things.

Buy the Cub Cadet Mulching Blade Kit here.

Join the Conversation

  1. Zach Kent says:

    I purchased the mulch kit for my 42 inch mower and it’s terrible. The plug won’t stay on. I’m going to try this zip tie trick today.

  2. Xiaoding says:

    Great fix for the plug! I was going to bolt on a sheet metal overhang, then fill it up with silicone rubber, but this is much better!

  3. Thank you for your review of the Cub Cadet Leaf Mulching Kit. It was very helpful!

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