Back To The Family Handyman
From 
Del.icio.us
Digg
Reddit
Facebook
StumbleUpon
TwitThisAbout This Project
Lawn looking thin, bare or brown? You can revitalize it in a weekend using just one or two tools from a local rental or garden center. The power core aerator loosens any compacted soil in your yard and breaks up thatch. Thatch is a cushion of old, partially decayed grass roots and stems that develops in many sodded lawns. It separates the actively growing crown of the grass plant from the soil surface.
The power rake is equipped with vertical fixed tines to cut the soil and prepare a thinned-out lawn for reseeding.
For you Northern homeowners whose lawns experience a hard freezing winter, the first dew in August is your signal that it’s time to aerate to ensure lush grass next spring. For homeowners in warmer or more arid states, aerate your lawn next spring to boost those warm-climate grass varieties before they go dormant in mid-summer.
Most lawns, whether seeded or sodded, are planted over a fairly skimpy layer of topsoil. Over time, lawn mowers, pets and pick-up football games compact the soil, making it difficult for air, water and vital nutrients to penetrate to the grass roots. Your challenge: to restore healthy soil conditions that nurture your lawn.
To loosen and aerate the soil, rent a power core aerator. They’re available at rental centers, plus some hardware stores and garden centers. In our area, an aerator rents for about $20 per hour. This self-propelled lawn machine employs a row of evenly spaced, hollow, 3/4-in. dia. spoons that penetrate the soil up to 3 in. deep. They pull out soil plugs, leaving a pattern of holes in the lawn that will readily absorb water, air and nutrients.
Our rental power core aerator may differ from what you’ll rent, but they all work basically the same. Ask your rental center to demonstrate the machine’s controls and the procedures for turning and reversing, then follow these general guidelines:
-
To avoid damaging the aerator’s spoons and scarring your sidewalks, driveways or steppingstones, run the machine across them with the rotating spoons in the raised position.
-
Flag and avoid lawn sprinkler heads or you’ll risk busting them and springing a leak.
-
Don’t use aerators on hillsides with a slope exceeding 35 degrees. For the safest hillside operation, go up and down hills rather than across them.
-
Maximize the perforation spacing in the lawn by following the aeration pattern.
Often, older lawns that haven’t been aerated and maintained have turf that’s scraggly and thin. After power-aerating the lawn, your first step to correct this problem is to rent a power rake—a gas-powered lawn machine that’s roughly the size of a lawn mower but 1-1/2 times heavier. They’re available at rental centers for about $15 an hour. The power rake is much less complex than a core aerator and easier to operate. Ours wasn’t self-propelled; we pushed it around the yard. It should be operated at full throttle to maximize the power of the continuously spinning, solid, vertical tines that pull dead grass and lawn debris up to the lawn surface, and leave a pattern of 1/4-in. deep slits in the soil surface. Used after the aerator, the power rake will prepare the soil to receive seed and/or fertilizer. Follow these tips for using a power rake:
-
Some power rakes (like ours) have fixed vertical tines for slitting the soil. These are better for penetrating any thatch and getting to the soil surface than loose, “flail-type” tines. Rent a power rake with depth controls that can be set the tines to cut 1/4 in. deep into the soil for seeding.
-
For lawns with smaller areas of bare spots or thinned areas around the perimeter that you can’t efficiently power-rake, prepare the soil for seeding by using a flat-nosed shovel to chop slits in the soil 1/4 in. deep. After seeding, use the knuckles on the back of a fan-type rake to “scuff” the seed into the soil.
-
Power rakes work best on lawns with even terrain. On bumpy lawns, a power rake will scalp the high spots and ride over dips in the lawn without cutting the soil.
The zone where grass meets soil is an amazing micro world of plant roots, bacteria, insects and complex chemical reactions. Healthy soil is soil that’s loose enough to allow air, water and nutrients to pass into it to foster plant growth. Keep these concepts in mind:
Compacted Soil Strangles RootsThe causes are many: In existing lawns, the top 1 to 1-1/2 in. of soil becomes compacted over time from foot traffic, riding lawn mowers, high clay content and rain. New lawns often have problems—beginning with home construction or remodeling—when topsoil is bulldozed, remixed with subsoil and overcompacted. Sod lawns that are hastily laid over unevenly graded lots look good enough for the contractors to get paid, but they can manifest problems after one or two growing seasons. In both cases, the eventual outcome is choked and starved grass roots.
Advertisement 
