Aerating grass involves puncturing small holes into the soil of your lawn so that air can circulate and more water and nutrients can reach the roots of your turfgrass. There are a variety of aeration tools available on the market and easily accessible in most home improvement and garden stores. These tools are typically some sort of spiking tool or perhaps even spikes that strap to your shoes.
Aeration tools such as these work by creating compression punctures in your turf. They are useful, but not as effective as professional aeration machines that work by actually removing soil plugs from the ground. These plugs remain on your lawn and are absorbed back into the ground over time, adding nutrients back to the soil. Meanwhile, the small holes that they left behind increase air flow and water to the root system of the lawn.
Warm season grasses like Zoysia and Bermuda, benefit from aeration during the summer months. Performing aeration service at this time allows your warm season turf to fully return from dormancy and become established. Unlike cool season aeration, which takes place during the fall, no over-seeding occurs following a warm season aeration. Over-seeding is beneficial for cool season grasses like Fescue, because that kind of turf germinates and develops from a seed head. Warm season grasses, on the other hand, grow and spread from tubers throughout their root system, not from seed.
By aerating your warm season grass, you allow the turf to develop deeper, stronger roots. This ultimately creates new growth and you should begin to notice thicker growth and spreading of your warm season lawn. Your lawn should be aerated by mid-July. This will give your turf the appropriate amount of time necessary to become deeply established and ready to thrive through the hotter temperatures during late summer.
At Canopy Lawn Care, we begin aeration service for warm season customers in mid-June and continue through mid-July. We prefer to use aerating machines that remove soil cores and find this to be the most efficient and effective way to aerate.
Following an aeration service, watering is extremely important! We leave behind watering information cards for our aeration customers for this reason. If you have do not have an irrigation system for your lawn, ensure that you lawn receives a minimum of 1 inch of water per week. If it rains, you may still need to manually water your lawn if it has not received an ample amount of rainfall. A simple, inexpensive rain gauge can help you determine if your lawn has received enough water on a weekly basis. We recommend watering in the morning for at least 20-30 minutes per area to ensure a good soak.
If you are unsure if you have warm or cool season grass in your yard, a simple way to tell is to note whether or not your lawn turns brown during the winter. If it does, this is likely a warm season grass that enters dormancy during the cold season and returns to its green state in the spring. This is a warm season grass that could benefit from aeration in June or July.
For more questions on aeration or to schedule a service, simply fill out the contact form above or below this post, or contact us today!
