How to Aerate Your Lawn: A Complete Guide to Timing, Tools, and Technique

The goals of lawn aeration are simple:
These include:
Next, to confirm compaction, excavate about a square foot of turf, with soil, using a shovel. If you’re unable to sink the shovel to a depth of half the blade, you’re dealing with compacted soil.
Once you do dig up the grass and soil combo, look for thatch and examine the roots. If you see a chaotic weave of living and dead organic material more than one-half inch thick sitting between the living grass blades and excavated soil is grounds for aeration. For healthy soil, this layer should be minimal.
Finally, examine the grass roots — they should be at least four to six inches deep. Anything less than that, and it’s time to aerate your lawn. To improve root depth post-aeration, consider using a high-quality lawn grass seed blend
These include:

As far as lawn care practices go, aeration can be preventative rather than prescriptive. If you use the core aerator technique, you’ll also be able to fertilize and overseed with great effectiveness. This is why many professional lawn services consider aeration an annual or bi-annual necessity, especially for lawns with high foot traffic or dense clay soil.
Sometimes, there may be so much thatch or such a high level of compaction that only the most professional or heavy-duty tools will suffice — and that’s when you may have to hire a lawn service company.
If you think about coring an apple, this is exactly what’s going on with your lawn when you use plug aeration. The holes are a lot bigger than what a spike could make, so there’s a better chance for water, light, and air to get in. With plug or core aeration, the action you’re taking is pulling up and out, rather than pushing down and into the soil, offering the most significant relief for soil compaction.
There are two types:
Tow-behinds come in spike v.s. core models. Keep in mind that the plug option takes more horsepower to run because you’re pulling up

This applies to turfgrass species such as:
This applies to varieties such as:
Follow these tips for cues on when to aerate:
Here’s how it works:
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