What is the best way to aerate your lawn?

Many homeowners dream of that perfect lawn, but it isn’t always easy to achieve. For many, the basic lawn care will be enough to get a great looking lawn. However, there are plenty of homes where, in spite of all of the effort put in, they just can’t seem to get the nice lawn that they desire. In some of these situations, lawn aeration might be the key.

Understanding Lawn Aeration
If you have been putting a lot of work into your lawn and seeing few results, then aeration might be a necessary step for improving the quality of the turf. In some yards, the density of the soil or the grass can prevent air, water and nutrients from reaching the grass roots. Under these conditions, it makes it difficult for the lawn to develop a strong root system and in turn, it can diminish the quality of the lawn.

To address this problem, you can employ the use of lawn aeration. In the simplest terms, lawn aeration is the practice of punching holes or removing cores from the lawn. The holes created by the aeration process will allow the water and the air to penetrate deeper into the soil and by doing so, it provides the roots with better access to water, air and nutrients.

Steps to Aerate Your Lawn
Before you get started with aerating your lawn, you need to determine the type of machine or tool you will use. When it comes to lawn aeration, you have two basic choices: spike aerators and plug aerators. The spike aerators use prongs to punch holes in the soil and the plug aerators actually remove cores from the soil. Both can be effective, but core aerators tend to provide better results because they remove some of the soil.

A good tip (click here) for aerating is to wait for the day after a good rain. It is much easier to aerate a lawn when the soil is a little moist. If you don’t want to wait for the next rain, you could water the lawn one evening and then perform the aeration process the next day. Additionally, aeration will have the greatest affect at the beginning of the growing season. Different types of grass have different growing seasons, this is a point that you may want to consider.
As another point, you only want to aerate the areas of the lawn that are having problems. Aerating other areas won’t cause any harm, but if you have a particularly large lawn, the process can take a while. You could save some time by identifying the areas that need aeration and focusing solely on them.

Benefits of Aeration
When you aerate your lawn, you are taking an approach that goes deeper than the surface. You might be using fertilizer and regularly watering the lawn, but if the soil is too compact or the surface grass is too dense, then much of these materials are not making it to the place where they can provide the most benefit. With aeration, you are allowing the roots to breath, giving them more room to grow and giving them better access to the materials they need to grow strong. For many homes, this will be the difference in achieving that full, healthy lawn that they want.

Signs Your Lawn Needs Aeration
To determine whether your lawn needs aeration or not, there are some signs that you can look for. If the soil is slow to absorb water, then there is a good chance that your lawn would benefit from aeration. After it rains, look to see if there are any puddles on the lawn, this can be a key indicator that the soil is having trouble absorbing water. Another sign is a lawn that is patchy. When some areas look good and others do not, then it could be a sign that some areas of the lawn would benefit from aeration.

If you are having trouble developing a nice lawn, then aeration could be an important part of your lawn care strategy. However, you may also need different lawn treatments and fertilizers. If you want a comprehensive lawn care strategy, the team from Fischer Environmental can help. Our lawn care experts can analyze your lawn and make a complete lawn care plan that will address the individual characteristics of your lawn to get the best results. Contact us today!