Aerating Your Lawn
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- April
- 18
The latest Q&A with our stable of master gardeners.
Q: The grass is green and growing. It’s time to work on the lawn. Someone told me that aerating the lawn is very important and is the solution to compaction. Tell me more, please.
A: Weeds and other pests thrive in lawns where there is excessive soil compaction or buildup of thatch.
Aerators, either foot or gas powered, remove plugs of soil and improve drainage and air movement. Under these conditions, thatch is decomposed more easily by soil anthropods and microbes. Do this once or twice a year.
A stressed lawn is usually suffering from lack of water or fertilizer, excessive compaction and improper mowing.
Removing plugs of soil will enable the water to penetrate easily to the root zone, and oxygen used by plants during respiration will be able to escape from the soil.
Do this when the grass is growing most vigorously, and remove plugs one-fourth to one- half inch apart. Break up the cores and top off with organic dressing of half sand and half compost or manure to one quarter-inch deep.
— Linda Treitel, Larchmont, master gardener with Cornell Cooperative Extension, Westchester
This entry was posted
on Friday, April 18th, 2008 at 7:15 am by Bill Cary.
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Bill Cary grew up in Louisville, Ky. His gardening was limited to growing parsley and impatiens on the windowsill of Manhattan walkups until the mid-1990s when he bought a rundown old chicken farm on 8 acres in the Hudson Valley. Now he spends his weekends chasing deer, hacking away at invasive shrubs and vines and wondering why he doesn`t have more meadow and less lawn.
