We breathe to live. When we have problems in breathing we start to feel suffocated. At a point of time, it affects our body and mind.
Even our lawn requires air to breathe and live. Lawns get suffocated too when it starts dealing with things like thatch, a layer of dead grass lying between the grass from above soil to the root system in the soil.
That’s why we need to aerate our lawn sometimes.
Aeration generally means to make small holes on lawn to allow air,water and nutrients penetrate the soil.
But before digging into lawn aeration, let us study a bit more on thatch why we need to aerate our lawn for that.
Thatches make it really hard for grass to breathe and at some point of time it stops your lawn from proper supply of water,air,nutrients etc. Moreover, as soon as you start mowing your lawn, the thatch may have a negative impact to the right mowing process too.
Thick layers of thatch will develop a strong resistance. So when you start mowing your lawn, the wheels may sink down and cause you to scalp your lawn.
The formation of thatch is unavoidable. But certain steps could minimize thatch formation:
Now, coming to aeration,
Cool-season grasses require aeration in fall or early spring. Whereas warm-season grasses need aeration in late spring or early summer.
The question itself isn’t quite right.We should rather be introduced with lawn aeration methods first.
There are mainly two ways of lawn aeration that we are commonly hear of.
Spike aeration involves creating holes with a spike aerators on your lawn.Spike aeration is normally done through regular leaf rake or forks (also known as de-thatching rakes).
Core or plug aeration requires you to remove a core/plug of grass and soil from your lawn.Plug aerators are used for plug aeration.This method makes holes deeper compared to spike aeration.It makes an easy way for air,water and nutrients to reach the roots of the grass.
Look for plug aerators that removes soil plugs by approximately 2-3 inches deep and 0.5 inches to 0.75 inches in diameter.
The answer depends on the size of your lawn and the amount of thatch your lawn is affected with.
If you have a small lawn and less thatch problems, then you could manually dethatch your lawn using spikes or forks.But if you really want to save your time,energy and want your lawn to get the proper nutrition it deserve, you must go for core aeration.
And if your lawn is big and you are facing severe thatch problems on your lawn, you should buy a core/plug aerator right away for your lawn.
We have found some of the best core/plug aerators to make the right choice easy for you :
Lawn aeration is really crucial to build a healthy and beautiful lawn.If you may spend so much for your lawn feeding it with nutrients and doing everything right but still don’t get results, you should aerate your lawn.
Also if you have a bermuda lawn that you have aerated but still quite didn’t get the right result, then we recommend you to check our bermuda grass care guide and find what you missed!