How To Aerate Lawn: The Definitive Guide

Wondering how to aerate lawn the right way? Here's everything you need to know. A well-trimmed and maintained lawn can greatly supplement the beauty of a home, church, park or even public areas. However, achieving an elegant look on your lawn is not easy.

You have to engage a wide range of skills and tools. For your lawn to achieve its lush and nice look you have to be prepared to irrigate, trim, and fertilize it consistently.

However, even with consistent watering, trimming, and adding fertilizer, you may still be disappointed in the performance of your lawn.

Why Aerating Your Lawn Matters?

The moment you realize that your lawn is performing below expectations despite doing everything right, it's time to up your game. This when the aspect of aeration comes about! But wait, what is aeration?

Aeration, as the name states, is creating small holes in the soil to allow the air to easily flow through. Adequate flow of air into the grassroots is important for ensuring that nutrients also reach every part of the grass.

Although many people are aware of watering, fertilizing and trimming, a considerable number of people are still not aware of the need for aeration.

Is It Necessary To Aerate a Lawn?

Aerating your lawn is highly important because of the wide range of benefits that it comes with. Aeration allows the soil to breathe by creating spaces that allow smooth circulation of air in the soil.

When there is an adequate supply of air in the ground, the grass gets more nutrients which help them to grow healthy. Aeration can prevent the grass from drying up even when there is a consistent supply of water and fertilizer.

But when is it most advisable to aerate your lawn?

Signs You Need To Aerate Your Lawn

One of the signs that you need to aerate your lawn is when it is often used as a playground. When a lawn is often used for playing, the soil gets compacted therefore preventing the air from reaching to the bottom part.

Aeration is also needed when the lawn was extensively used during constructions. During a construction process, the topsoil is often covered by contrition materials such as cement and sand soil used in the constructions.

The construction soil prevents the air from reaching the bottom part of the soil. Therefore, aerating can help to allow the air to bypass the construction sand into the soil supporting the grass.

When you realize that your lawn is drying up easily, it is a sign that your lawn requires some aeration. You can test this by digging a small area in your lawn to examine the amount of thatch on the ground.

When you realize that the amount of thatch is more than half of an inch, then you realize that your lawn should be aerated. Additionally, because of wind erosion, you are likely to find soft and fine soil covering your lawn.

The soil is usually transported from other locations to your lawn by the wind. This soil prevents effective drainage of water and can also hinder the plants from getting enough nutrients.

In this regard, you are required to aerate to ensure that air passes past the fine soil on your lawn.

When Is The Best Time To Aerate and Overseed Your Lawn?

Although there is no time that you are prohibited from aerating and overseeding your lawn, there are some seasons and period that experts recommend them as the best time to aerate. 

Basically, the rule of thumb is to aerate your lawn at the time when the grass can grow quickly. In this regard, the right time to aerate your lawn is during the fall or during the end of spring. 

This is because during this time the grass grows quickly and can, therefore, be aerated without the fear of having open spaces on the ground. Usually during aeration, on some areas of the lawn, the soil is usually overturned and can make aerated parts to look bare.

However, when the grass is at the season that is growing quickly, it is easy to aerate and still have a well-balanced lawn after few days.

How to Aerate Lawn the Right Way

Another reason why it is advisable to aerate during the fall season is that aeration requires a soft ground. On a soft ground, it is easy to make holes as well as scoop and overturn the soil.

Additionally, because of the fall, the aerated lawn allows the grass to immediately start to accessing nutrients and adequate water. Understand that you can also engage in lawn aeration even during dry season provided you have an adequate amount of water to irrigate your lawn.

Water is needed for two main reasons; for softening the ground, and for irrigating the grass after aeration to support first growth. Remember, the amount of water you will use during and after aeration should be adequate to ensure the plugged parts are able to start growing immediately.

Also read: Comprehensive Guide To Liquid Aeration

How Much Does It Cost To Aerate Your Lawn?

The cost of aerating your lawn can vary depending on the kind of lawn aeration tools that are used or rented by the lawn owner. There are two major tools used in soil aeration; spike aerator and plug aerator.

Just as the name suggests, a spike aerator is used to poke on the ground as a way of creating room for air to pass and reach the inner parts of the ground. On the other hand, the plug aerator usually removes a sizeable chunk of soil from the ground, thereby allowing the air to circulate with ease.

Factors Influencing Cost in Aeration

There are various factors that influence the amount of money that you can spend on the aeration.

Firstly, the size of your lawn a key factor that used by the aeration companies when quoting the cost of the services. The large the piece of lawn that you want to aerate the high cost you will have to incur.

However, in some companies, the customers with big lawns are usually provided with a discount. Most of the companies charge per a thousand square meter.

The second factor that contributes to the cost of lawn aeration is the kind of tools used. Companies usually have a wide range of tools which they use in the aeration exercise. This means you can always expect to be charged more when you go for a company with sophisticated machines.

It is important to understand that there is no standard cost of aeration, companies offer different costs depending on their cost of production. Fortunately, with the internet, you have an easy way of identifying the cost charged by the company before you can request for the services.

Double-Check Your Local Rates

All you need to do is to visit the webpage of an aeration company in your area and check at the prices of their services. Additionally, if the cost is not specified, you can always contact the company to get informed about the cost.

Usually, you would always first be asked to give the size of your lawn to the customer care, so that the cost can be calculated. However, understand that more than, you should also focus more on the quality of services offered by a given company.

You should go for a company that will give you value for your money. To ensure that you contract a company with quality service, you also use the internet to learn more.

With the internet, you can read through the testimony of the previous customers and their reviews in order to learn more about the quality of services offered.

Companies with the right quality services with a relatively powerful brand name usually charge more on the services. All in all, take your time when examining the company to aerate your lawn.

Do not only focus on the amount of cost charged for the aeration service but also examine other important factors such as the type of tool used and what the previous company is saying about the company from the reviews.

Hiring an Aeration Machine

Another strategy to achieve a low cost of aeration is to hire an aeration machine from aeration companies and then employ the machine personally and then return it.

Renting a machine is less expensive as compared to fully hiring for the services. However, before you hire the machine, you should ensure that you have the skills that are needed in using the machines. 

Additionally, you also required to ensure that you are acquainted with the different aeration tools. Under this option, you should ensure that you go to a company with a wide range of aeration machines so that you can exercise variety.

When hiring an aeration tool, you are supposed to examine the various kinds of tools in your chosen company. Understand, like hiring, the cost of hiring aeration tools also differs from one company to the other and there is no standard price.

How Long Does It Take To Aerate A Lawn?

There is not standard time that you should wait in order to aerate your land. However, most experts argue that aeration should be conducted at least twice per year. They argue aerating twice a year can make your grass to be of right quality and health for a long time.

Understand that aeration can be influenced by the type of soil on your lawn and the usage of your law. Therefore, when you realize that your soil is compact and hard, you should not wait for a long period of time.

What Influences the Amount of Time before Aeration?

The period of aeration is influenced by the texture of the soil. Lawns with clay soil many require frequent aeration as compared to lawns with sandy soil.

The period that is required to aerating a piece of lawn can be based on the size, tool and the experience of the operating person.

There is also a group of individuals that are not aware of how to examine whether their lawn needs aeration or not. If you are one of them, do not worry, you have an option!

You should seek the advice of the experts because they know better. You can contact an expert, who can come to your lawn and examine it and give you an advice on whether you should aerate it or not.

How to Aerate Lawn by Hand

Did you know that you can actually aerate your lawn by hand? Yes! There are various tools that you can use to aerate your lawn using your hands.

The tools used to aerate your land using hand-held tools are designed to aid small-scale aeration. Although by aerating your lawn using your hand you save quite a lot a lot of money from the reduced cost, the tools can be very time-consuming.

Therefore the tools are designed to only be used on a small piece of land because it requires excess manual work.

Important Guidelines in Aerating by Hand

When opting to use hand to aerate, it is advisable to invest in the tool rather than hire at a cost. Another important aspect is that you should be prepared to engage in soil aeration for a long period of time because of the low speed involved.

It is also important to understand that aeration requires a soft surface because it involves making holes on the ground or plugging out pieces of soil. Therefore, you should aerate during the rainy season or directly irrigate the land to soften the soil on the ground.

Why Aeration Matters

Lawn aeration is a good step to ensuring that you have health and quality grass on your lawn. Aeration is the process of eliminating thatch and loosening the soil to allow water and moisture to easily reach the bottom parts f the grass.

Aeration enables the grass to have long and strong grass which manages to go through the thatch and get access to water and nutrients on the ground.

Wrapping Up Our Definitive Guide on How To Aerate Lawn

When you decided to use your hand, you should ensure that you have selected the right tool. Hand-held tools, unlike the electric and diesel tools, they require a lot of energy from the user. Therefore, first and foremost ensure that the tool is in the right condition.

Then, work during the fall when the soil is relatively loose for easy penetration on the ground. As stated earlier, you can use hand to aerate a small lawn. However, as for a big lawn, you can hire or buy powered aerators or even hire the entire services from the experts that are knowledgeable on how to aerate lawn the right way.