How Do I Aerate My Lawn Manually
Push a hand aerifier’s hollow tubes into the grass’ soil, and pull them out of the soil. Leave the removed soil cores on the lawn’s surface. Repeat the procedure every 4 to 6 inches throughout the entire lawn. Alternatively, push a spading fork into the lawn’s soil to a depth of 4 inches…. read more
When Lawns Need Aeration
It may not seem your lawn could get compacted, but it happens easier than you may think. Vehicles or small equipment driven on lawns are more obvious offenders, but even outdoor entertaining or yard play by kids and pets can leave all or part of your lawn compacted. If you live where heavy clay soil is the norm, annual aeration is probably needed to keep your lawn from becoming thin and weak.
Dethatching and aerating are two different tasks, but they often go hand in hand. Thatch is the layer of decomposing organic matter that forms right at the lawn surface, between soil and grass. When thatch gets more than 1/2 inch thick, it works like compaction to prevent the flow of air, water and nutrients grasses need. Aggressive spreading grasses, such as Kentucky bluegrassin northern lawns and Bermudagrass down south, form more thatch than many other grass types. Aeration helps penetrate and reduce thatch buildup or prep it for removal through dethatching.
If your grass often looks stressed and your soil is hard to the touch or rainwater puddles up where it used to be absorbed, you may have compaction problems. Confirm your suspicions with a simple “screwdriver test.” Take a regular screwdriver and stick it into your lawn’s soil by hand. It should slide in fairly easily. If you meet resistance, your soil is compacted, and aeration can help.
Complete Lawn Aeration Equipment Guide
Whether you live in the scorching heat or the freezing cold, your lawn can become spotty and brown without the proper maintenance it requires. One method to help your grass grow stronger and healthier is aeration. Like any other plant, grass roots need oxygen. Over time, thanks to foot traffic, rain and snow, and gravity, the soil around the roots of grass can become compacted, limiting the amount of air reaching the roots. The result? A less than healthy-looking lawn, to say the least.
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Determining When Its Time To Aerate Your Yard
How Long Will It Take To Aerate My Lawn On My Own
The amount of time spent on aerating your lawn will vary depending on what aeration tool you use and how big your yard is. Here are the different aerating tools and the estimated time it would take to aerate a medium-sized lawn .
- Hand aerators: Mentioned previously, hand aerators can be quite strenuous and requires much effort from your hands to work the aerator into the soil. Using a hand aerator on your whole lawn can take a lot of time out of your day to complete correctly.
- Aerator Shoes: The amount of time it will take to aerate your lawn depends on how long it will take you to walk your entire property. Highly traffic areas will need to be walked over multiple times. Aerator shoes only penetrate the soil so much. If you are using this aeration method, it is recommended to aerate more often than the other methods. Like using a hand aerator on your whole lawn, aerator shoes can also take a lot of time out of your day to complete correctly.
- Rolling Aerator: Rolling aerators should take about 30 minutes to 1 hour to aerate a lawn.
- Tow-Behind Aerator: Tow-behind aerators should take about 20 to 30 minutes to aerate a lawn.
- Stand-On Aerator: Electric aerators should take about 15 to 30 minutes to aerate a lawn.
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Why Aerate Your Lawn
Over time, soil tends to compact and become hard due to foot traffic, mowing, clay soil, or poor drainage. This prevents water, oxygen, and nutrients from reaching the hungry roots. As a result, the turf becomes thin, pale, or patchy.
Lawn aerationa process of making holes in the turfbreaks up hard soil so that water and nutrients penetrate the grass roots more easily. There are two basic types of lawn aerators:
- Spike aerators, which simply poke holes into the soil
- Plug aerators, which actually remove a plug of soil and grass
Both break up hardened soil, but lawn plug aerators are more effective.
What Does It Mean To Aerate Your Lawn
Actually, lawn aeration is the way of puncturing the soil by preparing small holes that enable water, air, and nutrients to enter into the roots of your grass. While you can rightly aerate the soil, you can assist the grassroots to grow strongly. As a result, it is called the key to healthy lawn and turf.
After using the lawn frequently by you, your family, or pets, chances have been compacted the turf making the surface soil hard underneath the top layer. Similarly, thatch can develop in the lawn over time. Both compaction and thatch build-up can create a barrier layer to reach water, oxygen, and nutrients into the roots of grass and plants.
For this cause, aeration is the way to lose the soil of your lawn, and these more essential elements get into the grassroots. You can do this by making holes in the lawn. However, it would be best to be careful that there is a very definite process of aeration before you occupy a garden fork and start making dots in your lawn with holes.
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What Month Should I Aerate My Lawn
Ideally, aerate the lawn with cool season grass in the early spring or autumn and those with warm season grass in the late spring. When experiencing prolonged dry conditions and drought, aeration is recommended. This will improve the passage for water and nutrients to reach the lawns roots when watering is limited.
Different Types Of Aerators
There are many different types of aerators out there and they range from shoes with spikes to heavy machinery and everything in between so the questions you need to ask are.
- What is the best kind of aerator for my yard?
- Are some types of aerators better than others?
- The three main kinds of aerators are.
Here is a list of the different kinds of aerators available with Amazon links to my favourite one in each category.
A Core Aerator If you have ever seen an apple corer then a core aerator is a similar kind of tool. Where an apple corer will take the core from an apple an aeration corer will do the same thing to your lawn but on a much larger scale. This is the best way to aerate a lawn as it causes no compression at all. This is the tool of choice used by most lawn care professionals.
A Spike Aerator These kinds of aerators come in all shapes and sizes. They are easier to use than a core aerator but they are not as good. This is because the push spikes into the earth and this results in holes with compressed sides. An easy fix is getting a spike aerator as a pair of shoes and just walking around problem areas and you will see improvement over time.
A Slicing Aerator This machine has a blade and will basically cut lines into the lawn. These are usually only available as a pull-behind fitting for a lawn tractor so I have used a hand-pushed machine that uses a star trimmer in my example. This is a good machine to use if you do not want to disturb the soil too much,
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Preparing To Aerate Your Yard
When Is The Best Time To Aerate Your Lawn
The best time to aerate your lawn depends on the condition of your lawn and growing region. It can be done throughout the year, except for when it is winter and during the warm summer months. It may take some trial and error to find out when your lawn needs aeration. In general, it is best to aerate in early spring or fall.
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Water And Keep Off The Lawn
Finally, you will want to water your lawn for about 2-3 weeks.
You will want to water your lawn at least every other day to ensure your little baby grass is able to come in properly.
Be sure to follow the best practices for watering the lawn.
For best results water in the early morning before the sun rises.
How To Aerate Your Yard
If you’re convinced that your lawn is in need of aeration, here are some lawn care tips on how to do it:
- Before you get started, make sure the soil is moist enough. There’s nothing more frustrating than trying to aerate soil that is bone dry. Aerating the day after a rain shower or watering your lawn the day before is advised.
- Most aeration machines cover only a small percentage of soil surface per pass, so make multiple passes over the most compacted areas. Save resources by leaving unaffected areas alone
- The excavated soil plugs should be allowed to dry and then broken up to give your lawn a uniform, clean appearance. Break them up by running them over with a lawn mower or pounding them with the back of a rake.
- An aeration myth is that if you apply a pre-emergent herbicide on your lawn in the spring, aerating your lawn will destroy the herbicide “barrier.” This is not true research shows that aeration will not affect crabgrass control or weed prevention.
- After aerating, it’s important to continue basic lawn care practices such as proper fertilizing, mowing and watering.
Aeration is a beneficial practice toward achieving a beautiful lawn, but most people don’t realize it or understand the process. If your lawn is a candidate, make it an integral part of your lawn care regime. Your lawn will thank you for letting it breathe again.
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The Different Types Of Lawn Aerator Tools
The primary consideration when it comes to choosing lawn aerator tools is probably your lawn size. If the area is significantly large, an aerator tool attached to a riding mower would be a better pick. If you have a smaller piece of land, the manual options might be more fulfilling.
Lawn aerators come in different styles and are used in different ways.
Types of lawn aerators based on function:
Plug or Core Aerators
Plug or core aerators use rows of hollow tines to remove plugs, place them on top, and break them. You can have a variety of hole sizes depending on the machine you use.
Slicing Aerators
Slicing aerators use rotating blades to cut and slice through the hatch down to the soil. Though the dirt remains in the ground, these tools leave pathways for air and water.
Spike Aerators
Spike aerators simply boreholes into the soil. You can get spike aerators in the form of shoes and walk around your yard as you trim your fence or mow the lawn.
Different Aerator Tool Types:
Aside from the three aeration tool functions above, some people break them down into different types of tools based on how humans actually use them.
Manual Aerator Tools
Electric and Gas Aerators
Electric and gas aerator tools are more automatic. Both work with fuel , and you can use them as long as the power remains adequate. They are efficient and easy to use, plus they could help save time and energy. You can rent them at HomeDepot or other local rental shops.
Lawn Mower Attachments
Recommended Aeration Provider: Trugreen
If you dont have the time to invest in lawn aeration, or dont want to spend money on renting or buying equipment youll rarely use, consider hiring TruGreen. This industry leader has been in the business since 1974 and has an A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau.
TruGreen bundles its lawn aeration services in its three core annual packages. You can find the plan breakdowns below:
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Aerating Tools: Plug Aerator Vs Spike Aerator
Two main aerating tools exist a spike aerator and a plug aerator. With a spike aerator, you simply use the tool to poke holes into the ground with a solid tine, or fork. Plug aerators remove a core or plug of grass and soil from the lawn. For the best results, use an aerating tool or machine that actually removes plugs of soil. Poking holes is less effective and can actually cause additional compaction in the areas around the holes.
Look for an aerating tool or machine that removes soil plugs approximately 2 3 inches deep and 0.5 0.75 inches in diameter, and about 2 3 inches apart. These machines can be rented from lawn and garden stores or home improvement centers. Always follow the directions provided by the store. You may want to consider sharing the rental cost with a neighbor who is interested in aerating the lawn.
How To Aerate A Lawn In 7 Simple Steps
– Grass seed
– Fertilizer
1. Choose your aerator Firstly, you need to decide what you want to use to aerate your lawn. Two types of aerator exist: spike and core aerators. Spike aerators literally feature long spikes that puncture the ground as you pass over it. Core aerators, on the other hand, pull up cores of soil as they work, leaving them on the surface.
You can find manual tools for each method so you can aerate by hand, however attachments also exist which you can hitch and tow from behind a riding lawn mower. Alternatively, you can rent or buy electric dethatcher and aerators from most home department stores, such as the Ryobi ONE+ HP 18V Brushless 14″ Cordless Battery Dethatcher/Aerator ).
Between the two methods, core aeration is generally more effective because it leaves a much larger gap for the air to penetrate, but bear in mind it is more messy as cores will be scattered across your yard by the time youre done.
2. Water your lawn Make sure you water your lawn the day before you plan to aerate it. This will make the task much easier as the soil will break apart more freely. You can always schedule the work in accordance with the next downpour if you want to save water. You want about an inch of water across your lawn.
3. Mark any necessary areas you want to avoid Once you start aerating your lawn, youd be surprised how determined you can get. So much so that it’s all too easy to run over an unsuspecting irrigation head.
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