Aerating

“Should I aerate my lawn?

If you have clay soil and/or high traffic areas, your lawn will probably benefit from aeration.  The aeration holes can fill with active grass roots, grass clippings, thatch, and other organic material.  Over time this helps to enrich your soil and strengthen the root system.

Aerating is a total waste of money if the person who aerates your lawn does it when its too dry or they don’t sink the tines in deeply. The soil plugs will be so short (and the holes so shallow) that little or no benefit will be gained.  Talk to the person who will be aerating, and inform them of your expectations and explain that you only want it done if the aerator tines goes 2-3 inches deep.

Be sure to post sprinker flags by each sprinkler head so the aerator operator can avoid damaging them.

Also be aware that when aerating your lawn you risk introducing a fungal disease such as Fairy Ring.  The only way to eliminate this risk would be to disinfect the aerator tines, which would be very labor intensive and unrealistic unless you rent an aerator and do it yourself.  Even then, getting all the soil completely removed from the tines is very difficult.  Disinfecting tines that still contain soil may not eliminate the lawn disease they carry.

Should I let the plugs break downe or rake them up?

That depends on:

1. How much they bother you.

2. Whether or not you want them to raise the level of your lawn.  This would occur very gradually only if you aerate every year.  This will also make your lawns’ root system deeper.  But there is a limit to how deep grass roots will go, and a raised lawn may require you to raise sprinkler heads at a later date.

Helpful tip: a low maintenace way to level low areas of your lawn is to rake aeration plugs into those areas, but if you pile them too deeply, you’ll kill the grass.”

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