Even if your lawn looks like it isn’t flattening out, various things could be compressing it, including small equipment, riding mowers, and children who play touch football in your yard on a Saturday afternoon. The best strategy for letting your grass breathe is lawn aeration. Learning what lawn aeration is and how it works will show why it is undoubtedly a great thing. But when is the appropriate time to aerate your lawn?
When You Should Aerate
If you live in an area with thick clay soil, like Nebraska, yearly aeration will protect your grass from becoming thin and fragile. Sometimes, you’ll hear that dethatching and aeration are the same, but they are two distinct tasks. Dethatching entails removing excess debris, while lawn aeration penetrates the soil to limit thatch accumulation and prepare the ground for overseeding.
Certain red flags alert you when your yard could benefit from lawn aeration. Hard soil, noticeable rain puddles, and consistently strained grass prove your compaction concerns. To confirm your belief, take a screwdriver from your toolbox and jab it into the lawn. Ideally, inserting the screwdriver into the soil will be like a hot knife through butter. However, if the soil is difficult to penetrate, aeration is the best way to loosen it up.
Once you’ve determined that your yard is worse off than you initially thought, you can plan the best time to begin aerating. As with most lawn tasks, aerating in the fall yields the best results. It is generally cooler during this time, and the weed pressure will be less significant. Conducting this task during fall makes the most sense since you will also want to over-seed after aerating, and the cooler weather helps keep the grass seed moist, allowing for better seed germination and growth.
How To Aerate
Now that you know what lawn aeration is and when to do it, it’s time to learn how it happens. Lawn aerating equipment consists of two types: spike and core aerators. Spike aerators are the most common choice among homeowners because it’s the least technical. This process involves wearing shoes with spikes on the soles and walking around the yard. The problem with spike aerating is that it actually makes your lawn more compact since it is not pulling out soil; it just pushes spikes into the soil.
Core aerators are used by professionals because they provide the best results. If you hire Paradise Lawns for your yard aeration service, you can count on us to use this method to remove small plugs of soil with rows of tines and deposit them on top of your yard.
What You Should Do After Aerating
After finishing the job, allow soil plugs or leftover dirt to settle wherever they drop. They will decompose in the rain or disintegrate the next time you mow your grass, bringing healthy soil and organic matter to the surface.
The period following aeration is an excellent time to overseed your lawn, top-dress it with organic compost, fertilize it, and make minor grass corrections. Seedlings and nutrients have a direct route through the perforations your aerator generated to the soil and roots in your lawn.
After learning what lawn aeration is and how it works, it’s evident that this is something your lawn desperately needs to stay lush. Paradise Lawns is happy to let you relax inside while we do the heavy lifting of aerating your yard. We guarantee the job will get done correctly, ensuring your yard gets the best treatment possible.
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