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Growing a lush and healthy lawn requires patience, strategy, and some hard work. Not only do you need to take the time to choose the right grass seed, plant it at the right time, and water your lawn regularly, but you also need to keep your soil in excellent condition. Whether you have clay soil or compacted soil, knowing when to aerate your lawn is key to growing healthy grass.
Aerating your lawn is a critical part of lawn care because it ensures that water, air, and nutrients can all reach your grassroots properly. Aeration is something every gardener needs to think about, whether they’re investing in lawn service or they’re working on growing a healthier lawn when they move into a new home.
Here’s what you need to know about lawn aeration and what does a lawn aerator do to keep your garden in perfect condition.
How Does Aerating Help Lawns?
Aeration is a process that brings much-needed water and air to the roots of your grass. Lawn aeration helps to get rid of things like thatch, the loose organic layer of living and dead materials in your lawns, including roots, stems, and shoots, which develop between the soil surface and the vegetation. Thatch begins to build when your grass or turf starts to produce too much organic debris.
A small amount of thatch isn’t too bad because it can provide insulation against fluctuations in temperature and moisture. Excessive amounts of thatch can stop your grass from growing naturally and harm root development. Lawn aeration in late spring, fall, or just before the cool season will help get your grass back in good condition.
Lawn aeration ensures the soil is moist and ready to enable healthy growth for your grass while removing the organic debris that can make it harder for grass to thrive. Aerating your lawn can also remove soil compaction, making it harder for your grass to grow naturally.
Different kinds of aerators are available for your garden, depending on how significant your aeration needs might be. If you’re dealing with compacted soil in a small amount of garden, then you can create small holes in your turf with a spade or fork.
If you have a more significant amount of compacted soil or are trying to rebuild a healthy lawn from scratch, you may need special aerators that create small holes in the surface of the lawns and remove plugs or “core” sections of solid earth from the lawn.
Why Should I Aerate My Lawn?
Like the root section of any plant, the grassroots will require access to air, water, and nutrients to grow as strong and deep as possible. If your grass seed is suffering from compaction or thatch, then it might not be getting the right nutrients for growth. Many types of grass can die off, even in the best weather when you haven’t got enough space for the root to branch out.
Aerating your lawn with a spiking machine or a set of hollow tines to core and remove plugs from deep in the earth will help spread the soil out more evenly and improve the health and beauty of your lawn. Aeration holes can transform your garden when created at the right times of the year. Depending on the level of compaction you’re dealing with, and how healthy your lawn is, you might need to try different types of aeration and drainage.
Larger holes which remove plugs in the solid soil are often more necessary when the compaction is severe. A simpler machine that uses spike systems instead of tines might be suitable where the soil aeration isn’t too problematic.
When Should I Aerate My Lawn?
Knowing when and how to aerate your line is essential. If you don’t know the best time to aerate your clay or soil garden, you could end up aerating too much. Usually, the best time to aerate your lawn will be towards the end of late spring or early autumn. The weather needs to be still decent enough that most grasses can grow.
To determine whether your grasses are in severe need of an aeration process, you can consider using a hollow tine to remove a core or plug of earth from one section of the garden. If the soil quality is poor, when you create a couple of holes, you know the surface of your lawns is impacted.
If you want to wait to invest in aerators and tine products before you know how much aeration you need to do, you could try taking a spike or a screwdriver and pushing it a few inches into your grass. If you can’t dig down more than a couple of inches in autumn, the lack of depth could be a sign that now is the best time to aerate your lawn.
It’s also worth looking at the kind of grasses you’re planting. Some grass types and lawns require more holes and regular aeration to keep them in good condition. Check the process recommended for caring for your grass on the instructions you got when you bought your seed.
You can also look into aerating your lawn whenever you feel like you can’t control the colour of your lawn, no matter the season. If the grass growth seems different in different areas or the surface looks unusual, consider aeration to get more nutrients into different parts of the yard.
For cool-season grasses, the most common time to invest in aerators is during the early fall or spring, which is a good growing season for the grassroots. If you’re using warm-season grass, then you can look into aeration during the spring or early summer.
How to Aerate Your Lawn
Learning how to aerate your lawn isn’t as complex as it seems.
For the best results, it’s often a good idea to invest in high-quality aerators. Alternatively, if you’re worried about nutrients getting to the roots of your grass, you can hire a professional to come out and remove thatch and deal with the aeration process for you.
If you’re aerating your lawn, you can follow the process recommended by the product instructions. For instance, you might need to use your mower to get rid of dead grass and thatch before you start pulling plugs out of the garden.
You can then begin removing the core sections of compacted soil from your garden one section at a time, making sure you get deep enough to allow the soil to shift fully. Remember:
- Water the grass to make sure the soil is moist enough. You’ll struggle to pull plugs out of the garden or push the spike on your aerator deep enough into the soil or clay if the earth is too dry. It is particularly true if the soil is already quite compacted.
- Consider going over the lawn a couple of times. Most aeration machines will only put a hole or two into your garden every so often when you’re aerating alone. You might have to go through the most compacted areas a couple of times.
- Break up the plugs: Each time you pull a plug out of a hole in your garden when aerating the lawn, make sure you break it up, so you’re not left with large patches of soil all over your yard. You can decide whether you want to break up the plug and use it elsewhere in your garden or just put it into a composting heap.
- Read the instructions on your aerator. Make sure you know how to use your aerator. Some spike aerator machines only press into the soil a half-inch or inch at a time, while others will require you to press a lot deeper.
- Remember to care for the lawn properly after aeration. Aside from removing soil plugs as you go, you’ll need to think about how you can look after your garden after aeration. Ensure that your grass and soil get enough air and water by avoiding walking all over the new holes in your garden and watering the soil regularly.
- Remove lawn thatch and mow your lawn regularly: Use your lawnmower and a rake to get rid of the lawn thatch if it begins to appear again. You don’t necessarily have to aerate your entire lawn every time thatch appears. However, you should work on keeping on top of thatch to ensure your aeration lasts longer.
Looking After Your Lawn
Since you have understood about lawn aeration and what does a lawn aerator do to keep your garden in perfect condition, remember that once you’ve finished the aeration process and removed all plugs of soil, it’s essential to keep a close eye on your lawn. Every time you conduct regular lawn care, remember to keep an eye on your lawn aeration levels. You may need to use a solid tine from time to time to add some extra holes without pulling out plugs of soil. Make a note to aerate your lawn a couple of times each year at most.
When you aerate your lawn as part of your lawn care strategy, you should end up with healthier grass and a more beautiful garden. Once you improve the air-water ratio in your lawn with an aerator once or twice, the process becomes much simpler. Almost anyone can aerate a lawn with the right tools these days.
If you’re not confident using an aerator or feel there’s too much space to aerate alone, you can reach out to a professional team for lawn aeration tips or ask for their pricing on aerating a lawn.
Rebekah is a writer who loves to explore new products and find hacks that make life easier. She has a knack for all things home improvement, health and fitness. So you’ll often find her on Pinterest or browsing Houzz for ideas.
She’s always looking for the next thing to fix up around the house or what gadget might be just right for her lifestyle. Rebekah enjoys exploring new recipes, taking care of her family, and making sure she stays healthy with regular workouts at the gym.
