How to Aerate Your Lawn – Baby Steps for Lawn Aeration
Just as all living things need nurturing with food, oxygen, water and sunlight or heat, let us not neglect our soil and grass. To maintain a healthy and beautiful patch of green in our homes, we must regularly provide our lawn with abundant water, sunlight, and air. These are the natural elements that plants need in order to sustain healthy growth.
Although these elements hold the fundamentals to plant nurturing, it is significant that they reach the roots and the core of the soil because that is where the “digestion” and sustenance of grass take place. And so, if this is an essential practice in keeping your lawn beautiful and healthy, how exactly can you reach the roots and core of your lawn without having to re-landscape, which will definitely bore a hole in your pocket? Not only would you spend more, but you would have wasted a lot of time digging and patching it all up again. The best and only way to get the essential nutrients to your soil’s core and the grass’s roots is by aerating your lawn properly.
First of all, what does aerating your lawn mean? Aeration is a technique wherein you bore holes on the soil of your lawn, removing portions using manual tools or high-powered machines. The holes are made for water, oxygen and later on fertilizers to reach the roots of the grass to further nourish them. This is done also to recondition the soil from within.
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Rather than hiring professionals to do the aerating of your lawn for you, you can aerate the lawn yourself and save a huge amount of money.
As mentioned, there are two ways of aerating: either manually or by using high-powered machines. A manual aerator is a T-barred pipe with a handle and four hollow tubes to bore holes in the ground and to remove some inner soil. This can get labor-intensive, especially if your lawn is big. You will need more than elbow grease to condition your arms and legs for this strenuous physical activity, which will require some amount of force to push the manual aerator into the ground. Depending on the condition of the soil, your lawn may take longer or quicker to aerate. A manual aerator is the cheaper alternative, but again it takes more effort and time to get the job done.
On the other hand, a powered lawn plug aerator can be quite expensive, but it will definitely make the job easier and get it done faster too. It isn’t just expensive when you purchase one; your expense adds up because these machines are either powered by electricity or gas. Either way, you’ll have to pay for its fuel or power source as well. Most companies that provide gardening and landscaping services offer to rent out their equipment for very cheap rates.
If you decide that manual aerating of your lawn takes too much time and effort, but you can’t afford to buy a powered lawn plug aerator, why not rent one?
This will probably be the best option for you. Try to get the aerator that’s best suited for you to handle because these machines can be quite big and heavy. Get assistance if you need to. Usually two people are needed to perform the task of using motored lawn plug aerators but there are still some units that can be used single-handedly.
Before you start aerating your lawn, always check the condition of your soil first. Be able to identify if your soil is compacted, dry, or cracking. If water sits still on the surface and does not seep in, or if the grass does not become as green even if you have been fertilizing it, then aerating your lawn is a must. You may even have to do some soil testing before the actual aeration. Test it for lime, sulfur or fertilization needs, and then use them as recommended by an expert to see what formulas are best suited for your particular type of soil and grass. Try to let the grass grow a little taller than you normally would before mowing it. This will probably take up to a month of observation. These are the immediate signs to look out for, otherwise aerating your lawn should be done on a regular basis, which is once a month.
When you have decided your lawn is in need of aerating, drench your lawn with water and wait till the next day to aerate.
This will cause the soil to moisten and loosen up, since it has begun to dry and crack up due to the weather. When manually aerating or using a lawn plug aerating machine, walk back and forth across the lawn just as you would plow a corn or rice field, but only going through each section once. Make sure you don’t go over the same holes as well, and that you leave the cored soil where they drop. Mix in compost while crushing the soil cores to recondition the soil and make enough to fill in the bored holes on the ground. Use gloves or a hand rake to flatten the soil, making it even with the rest of the dirt. After this is done, you may fertilize the lawn but only once with a start-up turf grass product, better known as “slow release” fertilizer. You can get these at your local gardening store.
The downside of aerating your lawn is that during dry and hot weather conditions, aerating can cause a vast loss of moisture since the spacing of the packed soil has been slightly broken up. That’s why it is important to provide it with alternate shading and plenty of water. During normal conditions, shading is not needed.
Continue your regular watering and try not to cut or mow the grass for a couple of weeks up to a maximum of one month, depending on how fast or slow the grass will grow. Now, your soil has been conditioned to absorb enough water, oxygen and heat to nourish the roots of the grass, making a healthy, beautiful, bright green lawn.