Spring is an important season for lawn care. The work you put in now will help your lawn thrive after a long and sleepy winter and continue to look its best throughout the hot summer months ahead. We’re all familiar with watering, fertilizing, and re-seeding lawns—and we certainly all know about mowing them! However aerating a lawn is an often-overlooked chore that can make a huge difference both this year and for the overall life of your turf. Like most gardening chores, it all comes down to the particulars: when’s the best time to aerate your lawn? How should you go about it—what is the best way to effectively and efficiently aerate your lawn? And, of course, the “why”—why are we doing this anyway? Let’s dig in and learn the hows, whens, and whys of lawn aeration and how it fits into your overall lawn care plan.
Why Should You Aerate Your Lawn?
We’ll start with the “why”, because answering the question “why should I aerate my lawn?” also helps us explain and explore what aeration does to help create a healthy lawn. Some of the particulars may differ depending on the kind of grass you have on your lawn, but the basic idea goes something like this: grass is a plant, and like most plants it grows rooted into the soil. While grass does a good job of taking care of itself, the soil it grows in may compact over time. Compact soil absorbs less rain and nutrition, inhibits root growth, and thus makes it more difficult for grass to thrive. In addition, thatching may build up—that complex mesh of grass roots, dead grass, and living grass—and that can further inhibit the growth of a healthy lawn.
This is where aeration comes in. There are a number of different aeration methods, but they all serve the same purpose: loosening up soil and thatching to improve soil health. This not only helps your grass grow, but it keeps the soil healthy, avoids runoff and puddling, and promotes a healthy soil biome.
How to Aerate Your Lawn
There are a number of different ways to go about aerating your lawn. Different approaches may work better depending on the kind of grass you have, the soil under your lawn, and your climate/location, and we encourage you to do some research and talk to your local extension office or lawn care supplier about what works best where you live. The most basic way to aerate your lawn is to use a pitchfork or similar tool and just poke holes all over the soil! This may take a bit of time but it’s generally pretty easy and you may be able to do it with a tool you already own. Some lawn care specialists like Roman sandals. Also called “spiked sandals”, these rather interesting lawn care tools are outside soles that strap to the bottom of your shoes—they look a bit like the sandals people wore in Ancient Rome. They have long thick nails or spikes sticking out of the bottom that poke holes into the grass and soil as you walk around your lawn. They work quite well and are generally faster than the pitchfork method.
A plug aerator, also known as a spike and plug aerator or a coring aerator, goes a bit further. Shaped a bit like a garden spade, a spike and plug aerator has hollow steel tines that remove a plug of soil from the ground and leave it on the surface. This is a bit more intense than just the holes poked by a pitchfork or Roman sandals. By removing soil and leaving a hole instead, a spike and plug aerator both loosens the soil and moves soil to the surface where it acts as fertilizer of a kind. This both loosens the soil and solves all the problems that come with soil compaction and also vitalizes the soil by unlocking the nutrition both above and below the surface. You can also top-dress your lawn with compost or organic fertilizer and rake it into the holes to help feed both the soil and your grass. Spike and plug aeration is a bit more work, but with a quality tool it’s fairly easy and it can make a big difference for a densely turfed lawn.
When to Aerate Your Lawn
Generally speaking, the best times to aerate your lawn are mid-autumn and early spring after the soil has warmed up a bit. Aerating in the fall helps prepare your lawn for the winter months—cold and snow can compact your soil—and aerating in the spring ensures ideal soil conditions for warm-weather growth. Generally speaking its best to aerate when the soil is moist so wait until after a good rain or you’ve watered the lawn thoroughly. As we mention above, after aerating your lawn you’ll have a great opportunity to add some compost or fertilizer. This should also be done with the soil is moist, so check the weather to get the most out of your lawn aeration.
Lawn aeration is often forgotten or overlooked, but it’s one of the seasonal chores that makes a big difference overall. Give your lawn a good aeration treatment this spring and watch the improvement—you might just be surprised at the change!
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