Aerating Your Lawn

Aerating your lawn can do wonders to improve the overall condition of your lawn, and it should be on your regular "to do" list when it comes to backyard landscaping. Unfortunately, not many people do it. It may sound like a needless task to some, and may be overwhelming to others, but this simple form of lawn care maintenance can have a surprising impact on the health and vitality of your lawn.

There are many different tools marketed for aerating your lawn, and knowing exactly where to start may be confusing. Let's make the process a bit more manageable for anyone looking to improve the condition of their lawn.

If you're like me, you reside in a home in which the lawn hasn't been aerated for...oh....maybe the last 50 years or so! Hey, it's not all my fault...I've only been here for 5 of those 50 years! Regardless, it's definitely time for a little lawn aeration.

Some lawn improvement guidelines will tell you that aerating your lawn should be done about once every 6 months. That's probably a good idea if your lawn is as desperate for the process as mine is. Otherwise, a good general lawn care maintenance practice would be to do it about once every 1-2 years. As long as you're aerating your lawn on a somewhat regular basis, your lawn will definitely reap the benefits.

There are basically 2 types of lawn aeration:

1. core aeration, and
2. spike aeration

Spike aeration is just that, a solid spike is literally poked into the soil. Unfortunately, the spike does not usually produce a hole sufficient to accomplish the goal of meaningfully aerating your lawn, and because the soil is merely pushed apart, guess what happens? Yep, it goes back together pretty easily.

If you’re going to take the time to aerate, you’ll want to core aerate your lawn. This procedure will actually pull plugs of soil from the ground and deposit them back on your lawn. These plugs then naturally decompose, and by doing so, add nutrients to your lawn. Some people choose to rake those plugs up, but I think it’s better to allow them to decompose naturally on your lawn, and allow nature to work it’s magic.

What is it that aerating your lawn is supposed to accomplish?

Good question!

As you may know from working with the soil and other plants throughout your yard, plants tend to do better overall when they are given some oxygen and regular nutrition.

Take for example your garden.

At the end of the season when all of the plants are removed, it is typical to dig and overturn the soil so that it "cures" or "settles" during the winter months. This gives the soil a chance to rest and restore itself for the next growing season.

I failed to overturn the soil one year in my garden (and also heavily covered it with compost thinking that would nourish it...oops!) The following year I had thick, unworkable soil that produced poorly developed plants and vegetables.

Plants thrive in soil that is nourished and has had some exposure to the air.

Optimal plant development occurs when the roots of the plant have enough space to grow, healthy soil appropriate to grow in, and a healthy root system to take in important nutrients.

Think...AIR, WATER, NUTRIENTS!

Aerating your lawn will help accomplish all of those things.

As far as equipment goes, unless you are providing lawn service for the entire neighborhood, there is really no reason to own your own core aerator.

Do yourself a favor and rent a professional grade core aerator at your local home and garden center, like the one I have pictured here. It's more economical and less hassle for you in the long run.

The core aerator pictured here costs about $20 an hour to rent, with a 2-hour minimum rental time. You can easily finish the product in that amount of time if you've prepared the area before hand, and spending $30 once a year is much more economical than spending several hundreds of dollars to purchase your own machine.

To prepare the area:

• mow the lawn to a relatively short height - 2 to 2 1/2 inches,
• make sure the soil is wet - it's best to plan your aeration after a nice rain (not a monsoon), as the soil will be easier to work with, and
• run the aerator in a back and forth motion covering the entire area as you would with a lawn mower - if your lawn hasn't been aerated for awhile, I'd run the aerator back and forth the other way as well (run it back and forth east to west, and then again north to south)

And that's it! Leave the plugs to decompose naturally on the ground, apply some fertilizer or lawn seed if you'd like, and you're done for the next year or so!

Good luck to you on this do it yourself landscaping project! Happy aerating!