Routine lawn care is the best way to ensure your lawn is receiving the proper supply of nutrients, water and air to maintain its lush, green locks. Naturally, though, over time your lawn becomes worn and compacted. As the soil compacts, it squeezes the grass roots leaving minimal air-filled pore spaces and starving them of vital nutrients. When this happens, aerating and overseeding is the best thing you can do for your lawn.
What Is Aeration?
Aerating your lawn means breaking the grounds surface and removing 2-3 inch plugs of soil via a core aerator. This creates an open channel in your lawn to allow water, nutrients and air to flow back into the soil and penetrate the grass roots, thus enriching it and helping it grow to its full potential. This also gives more room for beneficial microorganisms live and allows fertilizer to better reach those grass roots. The end result is deeper grass roots that produce a stronger, healthier lawn with fewer weeds.
How to Tell If You Need It.
There are multiple ways your turf is telling you it needs to be aerated. One signal is a heavy layer of thatch that is more than a half an inch thick. Thatch is little bits and pieces of grass that die and gather just above the soil that built up faster than it could be broken down. This creates a barrier, keeping moisture and air from getting to your grass roots.
Heavy wear and tear on your lawn that causes thinning from things such as foot traffic, turns brown quickly in dry weather, or have thick strands of clover are also good candidates for aeration. If your turf isn’t draining properly and puddles after a hard rain or your soil feels hard as a rock, you should consider to aerating. Or if you never have, chances are you probably should.
Why Should You Aerate?
Aerating your lawn optimizes root development and helps reduce thatch buildup. The deeper root system that it creates provides a greater resistance to disease, insects, drought and heat stress, improves drainage and air, fertilizer and water movement.
When Should You Aerate?
Your soil type can be the deciding factor on how often you should aerate your lawn. For example, clay soil compacts easily and should be aerated more frequently – at least once a year. Likewise, if your lawn sees a lot of foot traffic it should also be aerated annually.
Aerating your soil when it is moist is ideal. However, be careful it isn’t too wet. Avoid aerating during times of high heat and/or drought conditions. The heat will dry out the soil causing stress on your lawn.
Fall and spring are the best seasons to aerate, but your grass type may be best suited specifically for the fall OR spring season. The best time for aeration is during the growing season when the grass can fill in any open areas where the plugs once were. For example, fescue is best aerated in the fall, as it is a cool-season grass.
Overseeding
Lawn overseeding is often paired with lawn aeration. Because aeration is done during the growing season it’s the perfect time to put seed down. The holes created from the aeration process allow for good seed-to-soil contact where the seeds can then germinate.
During the germination process, it’s vital to keep the seeds moist until they are established for maximum results. Try doing this when you’re anticipating rain fall to cut down on watering costs.
A thick lawn not only looks, but feels great too. It helps out-compete weeds, helps shade the soil beneath your turf and protects your soil from any heat and drought stress. No matter what lawn challenges you’re experiencing, contact our experts at Bluegrass today. Give us a call at 314.770.2828 or fill out our simple contact us form to discuss your lawn needs.
Lawn treatments are performed by Weed Man of St. Louis, LLC, a subsideary of Bluegrass Lawncare of St. Louis, LLC.
