One of the best lawn care steps you can take this spring is lawn aeration. Aerating your yard promotes healthy root growth, resulting in a greener, healthier lawn. Continue reading to learn about four tips for lawn aeration from the team at Greenworks Lawn Care.
The ideal seasons to benefit from aeration are spring and fall. Aeration enables your grass system to fully benefit from the increased moisture of spring, which is advantageous for root growth. Although most grass species develop in the fall, the additional room provided by aeration helps your root system to make the most of the growing season.
Plug aeration and spike aeration are the two main aeration techniques used on lawns. With spike aeration, a hole is pushed into the soil, whereas plug aeration takes soil plugs from your grass. Both techniques promote drainage and increase root space, but plug aeration is less compaction-causing, offering your grass more time to benefit from the aeration process. Plug removal is preferable to forks or tines since they leave a hole in your yard but also worsen the compaction around the holes.
It is advisable to leave the plugs that were removed during aeration strewn around your lawn close to the hole they created. Because these plugs contain essential components that must be restored to your grass, they should be left alone. After the plugs have dried, you can just mow over them with a lawnmower rather than collecting and removing them. Over time, the plugs will break down from mowing and raking, filling in the holes.
Moisture is always important for maintaining a lawn, but aeration particularly depends on it. Think about how the body of a moist cake reacts to a fork vs how a dry cake reacts. The surface chips and crumbles when the tines are inserted into the dry cake, which requires a lot of pressure. You can easily insert and remove a fork from a wet cake. As such, a lawn that is hard and difficult to aerate is probably the one that needs it the most. Your machine will be challenging to use and you’ll be in for a long, trying day if you try to aerate a particularly dry, compact lawn.
Greenworks Lawn Care is located in Carmel and serves homes and businesses in Zionsville, Westfield, Fishers, and beyond. From lawn fertilization to full-on lawn renovation, we do it all. Contact us today at (317) 663-0222 to request an estimate.
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