Helping Your Lawn Achieve Its Potential: Aerate!:

Who doesn’t love a nice, lush, green lawn for entertaining, relaxing, and simply admiring? While it is true that is hard work maintaining a beautiful and healthy lawn, its benefits are immeasurable and well worth the blood sweat and tears. While everyone knows it is essential that a lawn be well hydrated, most homeowners neglect an essential part of lawn maintenance that allows the precious water do its job more fully, namely, aeration. Aeration not only promotes growth, it will help ensure that your lawn is thicker, grows faster, and healthier than ever!

The main objective of aeration is to create a situation where the grass roots penetrate more deeply into the soil while allowing essential oxygen, water, and nutrients ample access to the roots and soil as well. Though aeration may seem tedious to some, few can argue with results. An aerator tool can be picked up at your local hardware store for not too much coin, and is well worth the expenditure, unless you enjoy tracing your entire lawn, on hands and knees, poking holes; now that would be an excellent way to get familiar with every square inch! Because your lawn sees its fair share of use, much more than your garden especially if you have children or pets, the soil beneath your grass becomes compacted, making it terribly difficult for nutrients to penetrate and do their best. A lawn aerator punches holes in your lawn as you push behind, similarly to a push mower, with the holes penetrating around three inches, clear to the soil. This helps loosen the soil, allowing for better and essential air circulation to the roots of your grass. This is especially helpful in grass restoration situations where new growth is desired.

Aeration is best when your lawn is sufficiently moistened. A good time to perform an aeration session is the day after a nice steady rain. If rain is not in the forecast, make sure to extend your hose from its hose reel and amply water your lawn the day before aerating. It is essential to not drown your lawn, but to water it with about an inch of water. An easy way to test this would be to place containers in the areas you are watering with an inch demarcated on their side. Once this mark is reached through steady and well distributed watering, turn off the hose. Overnight, the water should soak in and allow the soil to dampen just enough to perform the aeration. Many homeowners follow aeration with fertilization as well because the loose soil allows for penetration of the nutrients. Aeration should be accomplished twice a year with dense, clay-like soil, and only once a year for sandy-soiled lawns. With an aeration, fertilization, and hydration program, your lawn will benefit greatly and provide hours and hours of enjoyment for you and your family year round.