How To Aerate Your Lawn Manually By Hand In 3 Best Ways
How to aerate your lawn manually by hand? Over time the turf on your lawn becomes compact and filled with thatch. In this time, the turf will need much water, oxygen, and nutrients but the supply is stopped from reaching the roots of your grass and plants. To keep your lawn healthy as before, you will need to take steps to ensure essential water, oxygen, and nutrients that the roots need. You can do this through a process called aeration.
Achieving a healthy lawn needs a good range of regular care. Common care exercises are watering, mowing, and fertilization. Aeration is one more thing you will need to take care of to get a truly healthy lawn.
On modern Earth, there are many machines and tools to aid you to aerate your lawn and improve the healthy growth of your grass. Despite the best technologies, you still need to know why and how to aerate effectively and even how to do it manually, especially if you are a small or medium-sized lawn owner.
Lets have a look below:
Why Aerating Helps Lawns
Grass roots need air, water and nutrients to grow thick, deep and strong. When soil becomes compacted, even slightly, it inhibit the flow of the essentials that support thicker, healthier turf growth. A layer of compacted soil just 1/4 to 1/2 inches thick can make a significant difference in the health and beauty of your lawn.1 Aeration creates holes down into the soil to alleviate compaction so air, water and nutrients can reach grass roots.
Deprived of their basic needs by compacted soil, lawn grasses struggle in stressful situations, such as heat and low rainfall, and lose their healthy, rich color. Grasses gradually thin and eventually die out completely, for lack of the oxygen, water and nutrients available just inches away. Even a single aeration session can open the avenue for these essentials to reach their mark and put your lawn back on an upward trend.
Core aerators pull small plugs of soil to the surface.
What Tools You Need To Aerate
The Kent & Stowe Stainless Steel Lawn Aerator 4 Prong is an ideal tool to use. The 4 hollow tines remove cores from the earth by simply pressing into the ground using the footplate. The tines are conically shaped for easy penetration into the soil and create spaces for air, water and nutrients to directly access the grass roots. The holes created reach the lower levels of soil to improve drainage. This tool is also known as a hollow tine fork.
Alternatively, a spike aerator or garden fork can be used to simply poke holes into the ground. This approach is not as effective as soil is compacted to create holes rather than removed, but can still help with aeration. You should be aiming to create holes approximately 5-10 cm deep and approximately 10-15 cm apart.
For very large areas you can hire or purchase a powered lawn aerator for the job, as it can be very hard work.
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When To Aerate Your Lawn
As with most larger lawn projects, such as planting grass seed, it’s best to aerate during or right before the time your grasses reach their peak time for natural growth. Aeration is good for lawns, but it can stress grass if timed improperly. Never aerate dormant lawns.
For cool-season grasses common in northern lawns, early fall or early spring are the best times for aerating. For warm-season grasses common to southern lawns, the best time for aerating is late spring or very early summer. When aeration coincides with active growth, grasses recover quickly and fill in areas where aerator equipment exposes soil.
Aerating is easiest on you and your lawn when your soil is moist from irrigation or rainfall the day before. Overly dry soil can be tough to aerate, so moisture eases the process. Never aerate overly wet lawns wait a few days instead.
Slicing aerators slice through lawns and leave soil in place.
Dont Remove The Plugs
The plugs removed during aeration are best left scattered about on your lawn near the hole they left behind. Do not consider removing these plugs because they contain vital elements that need to be restored to your lawn. Instead of gathering and removing plugs, you can run over them with a lawnmower after they have dried. Running plugs over with a lawnmower or breaking them up with a rake allows the plugs to disintegrate and return to the holes they came from.
Aeration is like a facelift for your yard, and the plugs are a necessary part of the process. The plugs will disappear in less than a few weeks, and the overall improvement in the health and appearance of your lawn will be dynamic.
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Lawn Aerator And Other Tools Youll Need For The Project
- Lawn aerator: There are many different types of aerators to choose from. If you have a garden tractor, a towable aerator might be ideal for you. A manual aerator is the cheapest way to go for just $40. You can also use a push aerator, which works like a manual lawn mower. Finally, you can even strap on some lawn aerator spikes to your shoes and aerate your lawn by walking around on it.
- Garden gloves: Always wear a good pair of gloves when working outside.
- Irrigation flags: Youll need irrigation flags to mark obstacles before you start aerating your lawn.
- Lawnmower: For this project, youll need to mow your lawn first with a quality lawnmower.
- Garden hose: Use a standard garden hose to hook your sprinkler up to your water source.
Types Of Lawn Aeration
Core Aeration: This type of aeration removes small plugs of soil from the lawn to improve air circulation, water drainage, and fertilizer uptake.
Spike Aeration: Otherwise known as plug aeration, this type of aeration simply creates small holes in the lawn without removing any plugs of soil.
Liquid Aeration: This type of aeration uses a liquid spray containing nutrients that will encourage more pore space in the soil. This method does not require homeowners to mark sprinkler heads as it does not puncture the soil layer.
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When To Aerate Your Lawn For The Best Results
Lawn aeration is best done when your grass is in its peak growing period as this will help your lawn recover quickly. For cool-season grass, the best time is in early spring or late fall, and for warm-season grass, its late spring or early summer. However, there is an exception…
If youre trying to get rid of lawn weeds or want to prevent them from sprouting up, we recommend avoiding early spring for cool-season grass and opting for fall instead. Why? Because early spring is when weed seeds are looking to germinate and the open holes that aeration adds to the soil provides those seeds with the perfect home.
If you have severely compacted soil and need to aerate in spring, opt for late spring when weed seeds have already germinated but before theyve had a chance to flower and go to seed. Unsure whether you have cool-season or warm-season grass? We breakdown the two types in how to cut your lawn to the best height .
When it comes to the frequency of aeration, every two to three years is likely to be sufficient for sand-based soils. For clay-based soils, or if your lawn gets a lot of heavy use, youll want to make aerating your lawn an annual event.
Can I Aerate My Lawn In November
For warm-season grasses it is too late to aerate once the growing season has passed in late summer into early fall. For cool-season grasses, late fall into early winter is too late to aerate.
Can you overseed in late fall?
Dormant seeding is the collective term for overseeding lawns in late fall and winter, when soil temperatures are too cold to allow grass seed to germinate. In the mid-west, the opportunity for dormant seeding is best from mid-November through early March, while soil temperatures remain below 50 degrees.
Can you overseed grass in fall?
Fall is the best time to overseed a lawn or repair thin or bare areas. Cool nights and mild, shorter days provide the ideal conditions for seed germination. Grass seed is better able to retain moisture during the fall, and seedlings will thrive without the extreme heat that occurs in the summer months.
Do you have to aerate your lawn in the fall?
If you were fertilizing, aerating, and overseeding your lawn in the spring, youll want to make sure you do it again in the fall. That second round is vitally important to help the roots of your lawn become as strong as possible before the frost. There are a few things you can do to give your lawn the best chance to thrive next spring.
Which is the best type of aeration for lawn?
Aeration can improve the health of your grass, allowing roots to grow deeper and stronger. Core aeration is the best type of lawn aeration.
What does a core aerator do to a lawn?
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How Often Should I Aerate
How often you aerate your lawn depends on a few factors. Our turf care experts at Timberline recommend once annually, during fall, for the typical lawn. If your lawn is walked on, mowed, or used very often, this will cause additional compaction. Clay soil types tend to compact more than other soils which could increase the need for aeration.
High use lawns may require twice per year aeration, once in spring and once in fall, to keep them healthy and beautiful. However, the opposite is also true. If your lawn is lush, beautiful, and almost never has foot traffic, aerating every couple of years may be the best fit. Its important to remember, aerating too often can cause more harm than good for your lawn. If youre unsure how often to aerate or what soil type you have, a turf care expert will assist you in determining your lawn care needs.
Does My Lawn Need Aeration
Lawns that suffer heavy foot traffic and consist of clay soil get compacted more easily, so they likely need to be aerated more often. Does rainwater run off your lawn without soaking in? Did your lawn turn brown after a few days of hot weather? If so, it might be time to aerate. Another check: Dig into a square-foot section of your lawn and inspect how deep your grass’s roots grow. If they extend less than two inches into the soil, then it’s time to aerate.
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How To Aerate A Lawn
Aerating a lawn involves making small holes in the soil which let air, water and nutrients reach the roots. But why do you need to do it?
Over time, as you use your lawn, the soil gets compacted, explains Carlos Real, lawn care expert and managing director of TotalLawn . This occurs mainly due to foot traffic and is accelerated by children and animals running around on it. This is not a problem so long as you periodically aerate the lawn. If you choose not to do this job, then what happens over time is that the soil becomes so compact that oxygen can’t reach beneath the surface to the bacteria and fungi that rely on it to keep your lawn healthy.
Why Should I Aerate My Lawn
Lawn aeration helps the roots grow deeply and produce a stronger, more vigorous lawn. The main reason for aerating is to alleviate soil compaction as it limits the amount of nutrients and water able to penetrate the roots of your lawn – which you dont want. Over time, particularly during a wet, soggy winter or heavy traffic during summer your lawn can become compacted which does not allow the goodness of air, water and nutrients to get down into the grass roots. Compaction is the devil when it comes to lawn care and can lead to nasty issues including poor drainage, bare patches, weed issues, fungal disease and fairy rings.
If youre worried your lawn has developed a weed issue or has bare patches, visit our helpful lawn care page over on our website. Youll also find information about common winter weeds and how to kill them here.
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Can You Aerate Too Much
Loose soil doesnt need to be aerated very often. Especially thick types of grass may also call for aerating more frequently. As a general rule, you shouldnt need to aerate more than once a year at any time .
Is aeration overseeding worth it? The aeration gets rid of compacted soil and thatch, which means the roots can get everything they need to grow and overseeding ensures there is plenty of grass growing to cover the lawn and ensure it looks thick and green.
What is another word for aerate?
In this page you can discover 24 synonyms, antonyms, idiomatic expressions, and related words for aerate, like: ventilate, aerify, oxygenise, wind, charge, breath, oxygenize, inflate, activate, air-out and cross-ventilate.
Can you walk on lawn after aeration? You cant walk on the lawn after aeration because the seeds and fertilizer need time to settle, and the soil could get too compact. Walking or mowing on a freshly-aerated lawn can prevent the seeds from sprouting and the soil from getting enough oxygen and nutrients.
Do I Need To Have My Lawn Aerated
Asked by: Federico Greenfelder DVM
No, it’s not necessary to aerate your lawn every year, especially if your grass is healthy and thriving. Aeration is good if you’ve got compacted, poor or clay-heavy soil that’s been impacted by heavy equipment or lots of foot traffic. It’s also good to aerate if you are renovating a yard or installing a new one.
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Lawn Aeration Tips To Give You A Better Lawn
A great lawn does not happen by accident. Every homeowner would like the kind of verdant lawn that you see at golf courses or major league ballparks. However, many homeowners forget that maintaining a lawn requires the diligence and knowledge of a farmer cultivating a cash crop. The more you know about what your lawn needs to thrive, the better your chances of achieving the kind of lush surface that will make your neighbors green with envy.
Soil compaction stifles your root system and can result in stunted growth, poor color, and an overall unhealthy look to your yard. Compacted lawns have too many particles pushed together, which reduces water, air, and nutrient absorption. Compaction is prevalent in high-traffic areas, but any yard can be rejuvenated by paying attention to the turf structure. Lawn aeration is one of the most powerful tools at your disposal to improve turf viability. Here are some simple tricks to ensure you get the greatest benefit.
How To Dethatch Your Lawn
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Core Aeration For Lawns
The best method of lawn aeration is to use a core aerator . This is the method professionals use.
But most home centers and equipment rental services will rent you a professional core aerator which you can use on your own lawn to save money.
These aerators actually make rows with small spikes that remove the plugs of soil from the lawn. The aerator leaves these plugs on top of your lawn.
Not every machine is the same, and there are different variations of sizes with different widths and depths.
How To Aerate With A Garden Fork
- Avoid aerating in very dry or very wet conditions.
- Firmly spike the surface down to at least 30mm
- Move the fork back and forward a little then pull out.
- This cracks the soil a little and creates a hole in the soil to allow air in.
Doing this during the spring and autumn season has a good effect on the lawn.
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Diy Lawn Aeration Tips
If youre looking for a DIY version of aeration, you can simply use a sturdy garden fork. Just insert the fork into the lawn and wriggle it back and forth to fracture the soil profile.
For more DIY aeration options check out seven make-at-home versions online here.
However you choose to aerate, you need to cover your lawn effectively and aim for spacing between the holes of around 8 10cm. You might even need to go over the area twice in a different direction each time to ensure full coverage. If your lawn is on the larger side, you can hire a specialised aerator to tackle the job. A spiked roller is also useful for lawn aeration for incorporating lime, gypsum, or coarse sand into the profile of your grass to improve drainage and pH levels.
You could also consider core aeration, which unlike regular aeration simply punches holes in the ground, removing a plug of soil from your lawn at the same time. Core aeration helps manage thatch build-up by introducing thatch-decomposing microorganisms from the soil to the top of the thatch layer and more importantly, relieves soil compaction. Remember to leave the plugs of turf for at least 1-2 weeks as they will break down and feed nutrients back to your lawns roots. We know its tempting to clean up but let them feed your lawn and youll reap the rewards in the coming weeks and months.
