Why, When, and How Plug Aeration Helps Your Lawn?

Having a backyard is a dream if you love to have your lawn and turn it into a beautiful garden. The jobs that occur only once a year play a crucial role in supporting tiny steps over months. Plug aeration of lawns helps the growth of grass and relieves soil compaction, which is a daily job for many houses. Almost any lawn can benefit from aeration when it is done on time and every day.

Why and How Aeration Helps With the Lawn?

Nutrients, air, and water are the main ingredients that grasses require to grow deep, thick, and strong. The soil compaction helps the essential nutrients and other important elements that support healthier and thicker growth. The one-fourth to half-inch thick soil compacted can make a significant difference in the lawn’s beauty and make it fit. The aeration helps to make holes inside the soil to increase water, air, and nutrients, reach the grassroots and help them grow.

Low rainfall and extreme heat makes the grass unhealthy and loses their color. This is because lawn gardens don’t always get the basic needs for the compaction of the soil. Due to a lack of oxygen, nutrients, and adequate water to grow, the grass becomes thin and loses its rich color, and it eventually turns dead. Even with one cycle of aeration, the soil can be opened to potential water, nutrients, and oxygen for the grass. This helps the garden evolve and become better and healthy.

When Do Your Lawns Need Aeration?

Often without proper maintenance, lawns might seem difficult to be aerated for compaction. People often use vehicles to drive over the lawn garden. However, apart from that, outdoor games and kids playing on the lawn can make parts of the lawn compacted. If you live in an area with heavy clay soil, you must try aeration at least once a year to make it weak and thin.

Plug aeration and dethatching are two different tasks, but they are often required to be done together. The decomposing organic later that forms in between the soil and the grass on the lawn’s surface are known as thatch. When the thatch is about half inches thick on the soil’s surface, it helps the process of compaction by trapping the water, nutrients, and air within the soil that helps the grass grow. Bermuda Grass and Kentucky bluegrass tend to form thick layers of thatch and grow aggressively in the lawn. Aeration helps to remove excessive thatch and penetrate through the layers of the soil. Sometimes removal of thatch is done in lawns with the help of dethatching.

It is important to check the grass often to maintain it. Sometimes the rainwater finds it difficult to absorb in the soil, and this means that the soil is hard and is facing compaction problems. In such cases, it is best to aerate your lawn. If you are unsure, try the screwdriver test. In this test, you need to try to stick the screwdriver in the soil. If it goes easily, then your soil is fine. However, if you see that it is having resistance on its ways, you need to aerate the land.

How to Perform Aeration In Your Lawn?

There are three main types of aerating equipment. Large tractor-like machines and small manual versions of tractors.

• The spike aerators help to make holes with spikes like solid things. Some people use spiked aerator shoes to walk down the lawn and make holes in the soil for aeration. However, it is only applicable if you have a small area of lawn. In the case of bug kawns, it is best to use machines.
• The blades or slicing aerators are rotational and cut down the thatch and grass to enter the soil. However, slicing aerators tend to leave soil under the soil, which is similar to spike aerators. However, these create an oath to nutrition, water, and air without causing any more compaction.
• Plug or Core Aerators are used by lawn professionals, which creates rows of hollow tines, helping with removing plugs from the lawn soil and depositing them on the surface. The holes and plugs that the aerators create have different depth and width depending on the machines they use.

Final Words

Plug aeration of the lawn is easy when it is a small area. However, it is best to call up a professional once every year to aerate the lawn. Various lawn maintenance stores provide rental machines to aerate the lawn. It is important to understand the problems related to lawns and provide the right solution.