Lawn Care

Give Your Lawn A Breath Of Fresh Air

Taking proper care of your lawn requires a combination of grooming, fertilizers, irrigation and more.  Sometimes, despite your best efforts, your lawn can begin to look like it has taken a turn for the worse.  The solution, quite often, can be provided by the use of a lawn aerator.

That’s right.  Many homeowners don’t realize that a terrific way to rejuvenate a lifeless looking lawn is with a seasonal aeration.  In general, the soil underneath the exposed blades of grass can become compacted, leaving an accumulation of thatch and, in a sense, choking off the supply of fresh air to the roots.

To create a loosening of the soil, a lawn aerator makes a series of holes.  At first the plugs of dirt from the holes litter the surface of your lawn.  These can be easily swept away with the next mowing.  But this is a small inconvenience and will be a welcome tradeoff for all the benefits to your lawn.

Proper use of lawn aerator equipment creates an opening for moisture and nutrients to get to the root system.  In addition, the soil gets oxygenated in the process, which stimulates root growth.  Further stimulation occurs by the shearing of the roots and removal of the dirt plugs.  The grass root system, by nature, wants to fill in the newly created space left by the missing core or plug.  The resulting stronger root system manifests itself in a more green, lush and healthy lawn.

Depending on the size of your lawn, carefully choose a lawn aerator.  For a smaller surface area, there are manually operated hand tools that you can easily work with yourself.  These are commonly found at any home improvement store or gardening center.  For the bigger jobs, you may want to contract a lawn service.  They will likely have something for commercial use – a powerful tractor operated aerator, or something of that nature.

Whatever you choose, you should use the lawn aerator when the soil is just a little damp.  If the soil is too dry, it will most likely not allow for thorough enough penetration.  If the soil is too wet, the resulting hole and plug may not be made uniformly.

Before you decide to aerate, check with a local garden expert.  Some grasses thrive in cooler climates and some thrive in warmer climates.  The general recommendation is to aerate cool season grasses in the fall and warm season grasses during the summer months.  Make sure you know what kind of grass you have, and properly categorize it as belonging to one class or another.

After aeration, you should consider a good seeding.  You might use a seed product or perhaps something like a seed and fertilizer mix. But wait for a week or so after aeration and before seeding and/or fertilizing.  This will allow time for the lawn to recuperate on its own.  The subsequent seeding and feeding will simply give your lawn a boost.

Give your lawn air.  Give it life.  Give it a lawn aerator.