When, How, and Why Should You Aerate Your Lawn?
Yes, you need to aerate your lawn. Like humans, grass also needs a breather through aeration, which is the key to creating a thick and healthy lawn. Some telltale signs your lawn needs aeration include uneven grass growth, thinning out, and changing color.
These ugly symptoms occur when the soil is too compact, hindering the grassroots and water from penetrating.
The vital role of aerating lawn is to help the soil to breathe, thereby making the grass healthier. While it may sound like a complicated lawn care practice, lawn aeration is the key to unlocking your lawn’s optimal potential.
This guide discusses lawn aeration in depth – What is it? When is the best time to aerate your lawn, and how to aerate lawn? What are the benefits of lawn aeration?
What is Lawn Aeration?
Lawn aeration entails creating holes, slicing, poking, and applying any technique that can help air, water, and nutrients to penetrate compact soil in your lawn. It is one of the most excellent ways of curbing lawn problems, including dry grass, discoloration, thinning out, and uneven growth. It also helps the grassroots dig deep and grow stronger and more resilient.
You can aerate lawn by hand or foot with shoe spikes, using a spading fork, pitchfork, liquid solutions, or more elaborate equipment.
Why Do You Need to Aerate Your Lawn?
Harsh weather conditions, foot traffic, and outdoor projects over time make the soil in your lawn compact. Eventually, the grass starts thinning out, discoloring, and growing unevenly, among other effects, making your lawn unappealing and unhealthy.
The soil becomes impenetrable, depriving the grassroots of adequate water, nutrients, and air. This sets the ground for aerating lawn.
Lawn aeration is the key strategy to reversing compacted soil. It supports soil recovery by promoting water, air, and nutrient penetration, resulting in a deeper and healthier root system. Well-aerated soil also stimulates microbes to decompose thatch.
Thatch refers to the loose and organic layer of materials in the lawn – living and dead. Its build-up occurs when the turf produces organic debris faster than it breaks down, hindering the lawn from efficient breathing.
While thick thatch deprives your lawn of air, a thin layer provides insulation in harsh temperatures and fluctuations in soil moisture. Thatch only becomes harmful when it exceeds one-inch thickness.
The secret to effective thatch management is removing as much as possible in the fall, especially the autumn leaves. Some of the problems resulting from too much thatch include excessive water in the lawn, which minimizes turf roots’ access to oxygen.
Too much thatch can also promote pest infestation as it harbors dangerous insects and pests.
Compacted Soil
The critical goal for aeration is to break up compacted soil and eventually allow air, water, and nutrients to penetrate the root zone. Parts of the lawn that experience excessive foot traffic require regular aeration compared to those that don’t.
The Best Time to Aerate and Overseed Lawn
When is the best time to aerate your lawn? Aerating your lawn in the late winter, fall, and late spring is effective for controlling thatch.
However, the best time to aerate your lawn is when the grass is at its peak growing period – to help it recover faster after the practice.
When aerating your lawn, ensure that you adhere to these rules:
- Late spring and early summer is the best aeration time for warm-season grasses.
- Fall and February, into the first week of March, is the ideal time for core aeration and lawns with cold-season grasses.
If your lawn has no visible issues, you can aerate it every two to three years but lawns with clay soil or high traffic require annual aeration.
Pro-Tip: Aerating in early spring creates a fertile ground for weed germination. Fall is the ideal time to aerate a lawn, but if you must aerate in spring, Memorial Day and late spring is the best time – weeds will have found a home and not yet turned into seeds. This is also a suitable time for amending heavily compacted soil that compromises grass growth.
Types of Lawn Aerators
Lawn aerators are available in different types:
Plug or Core Aerator
Core aeration utilizes a motorized or manual lawn aerator machine. It comes with hollow tines that mechanically remove soil plugs, cores, and thatch from the lawn leaving behind cylindrically pulled cores lying around.
It creates instant aerated soil and is perfect for heavy clay soils and extensive lawns due to the motorized machine.
Spike Aerator
Spike aerators create holes in the ground by pushing the soil sideways, leaving wedge-shaped spikes penetrating the soil. It is perfect for sandy and loamy lawns and can cause compacted soil to close up the temporary holes as no soil is removed from the ground.
Slice Aerator
A slice aerator is similar to a spike aerator but uses a blade to slice through the soil diagonally. Like the spike aerator, it leaves the lawn undisturbed and slightly as it doesn’t leave cores behind.
Liquid Aerator
Liquid lawn aeration involves spraying your lawn with an enzymatic solution to break down the thatch. Most people find it unsuitable as it doesn’t offer an instant fix for soil compaction despite being the easiest to apply. It may require several applications, thereby taking several months and even years to overcome the problem.
How to Aerate Your Lawn With a Core Aerator
- Rent the aerator: Lawn aerator rental is more applicable than buying it, as aeration isn’t an everyday practice. You can rent from a local rental center or home improvement store.
- Aeration preparation: Before aerating your lawn, you should water the lawn lightly at least a day before the exercise. Ensure that you don’t water excessively, creating mud on the lawn.
- Aeration: The aerator pulls cores or plugs of soil from the ground allowing air penetration. The plugs should be 2 to 3 inches deep and be pulled out about every 3 inches. Leave the plugs on the grass to break into the soil, making it more nutritious.
- After aeration: Water the lawn every two to three days after aeration. It is also the most suitable time to overseed the lawn – quickly, within two days after aeration.
- When do you need professional help? You can hire professional lawn aeration services when the thatch problem becomes too severe, exceeding ¾ inches. In such cases, rent a vertical mower from the local rental center or hire a lawn service to handle the aeration job.
Wrapping Up Lawn Aeration
Compact soil is a popular hindrance to achieving a healthy lawn in high-traffic areas. Grass in such areas struggles with inadequate soil, water, and nutrients, making them uneven, discolored, and thin. Fortunately, aerating the lawn supports penetration of all growth requirements into the root zone, supporting proper grass growth.
