Why Albuquerque Lawn Aeration is a Smart Lawn Health Strategy

Creating a beautiful lawn involves doing the basics every day like watering, trimming and mowing.

For all this to happen successfully, a lawn needs both water and nutrients to find their way into the soil beneath the grass, where the grass can obtain what it needs to grow healthy and strong. This is done through lawn aeration.

Aeration gives a lawn the opportunity to receive fertilizer nutrients, organic nutrients, water and air it demands. The thatch and thick older grass lawns slow or stall lawn growth.

Find out what aeration is, how to do it and when to do it the best.

Aeration Explained 

The procedure of aeration involves drilling small holes into the surface of a lawn. These holes open the route of nutrient, water and air for the roots of the grass on the lawn. Aeration works directly with grass roots and makes them stronger and better, and creates a vital healthy lawn for your Albuquerque home.

Among the reasons why lawn aerating is required is to soften soils. Hard soils are packed so tightly that it is almost impossible for grass to grow well because air, water and nutrients can’t pass through the soil. A matted lawn thatch and the accumulation of organic matter on the surface of a lawn make it even harder for grass to access the air, water and nutrients it requires to thrive.

Is Your Lawn In Need of Air?

Owners often don’t know if their lawn requires aeration. Most likely your lawn should be aerated if it conforms to the following requirements:

• Your grass gets much more foot traffic than normal because it’s the one house that’s the most frequently passed around neighborhood with children. Dogs, kids, cats and backyard football the lawn and the surrounding soil are all becoming compacted daily.
• Your home was built all new, the soil is nutritionally deficient and very hard. Permanent foot traffic, trucks and construction vehicles packed more soil into your backyard.
• Your lawn doesn’t hold water and rain and is your sponges on the ground. Probably the grass has a lot of thatch on it. To prove this theory, bury a small blade of grass 3 inches into the ground. Aeration is required if you see thatch 12 to 1 inch thick or thicker.
• You started out your lawn using sod with artificial layering. The soils formed the layers, beginning with the loam covering the property’s soil. Over time, the soil consolidated and it was impossible for water and nutrients to enter into the property’s natural soil. In order to mitigate this problem, aeration is imperative. This will give water and nutrients a pathway back to the root zone and let roots settle and develop a robust root system. .

When to Aerate – What Time Should It Be?

At the height of growth aeration does the most good. Aeration digs up, cleans up the dirt and weeds. As the lawn grass grows its annual cycle, it can spread its root system after it’s been aerated. The best time to aerate warm season grass types on your lawn should be in late spring, and for cool season grass type laws, the right time to aerate is during springtime or falltime.

Spike vs. Plug – Which One is Better?

There are now two lawn aeration tools, the spike and the plug.

A spike aerator drill pokes the grass with a hard piece of steel and digs a hole down. By extracting a tiny core, a plug aerator forms a plug of grass and soil.

Top aerator of lawn is the plug aerator. Spike aerators are fine, but it will probably cause more harm than good, as it will compact the soil more than aerate it.

Find a plug aerator device that takes off plugs 3 inches deep and 12- 34 inches in diameter. You can rent a plug aerator machine from your local rental equipment company or at your local home improvement store. You have to follow the full instructions that came with the machine in use. It’s aiming to get the most useful product out of the aeration process when you’re done.

Steps to Follow Aerating Your Lawn

When you’ve assessed if your lawn needs to be aerated and you think it’s worth it, try the following steps:

• Add the moisture your lawn needs. If you attempt to aerate a dry lawn, you’re doing more harm than good. You can’t aerate it, and you will lose lawn and soil. Rinse the day before and it will thank you. If it rains the night before you fertilize, that will also work.
• Aeration machines are small and you’ll have to travel back and forth many times to aerate your entire lawn. Don’t be afraid to make the machine do what you can with the machine. Take more gas home for refueling to ensure you have the fuel to complete the process.
• When you aerate your lawn with a plug aerator, your lawn will accumulate plenty of plugs. Set them on the lawn. These plugs will dry up, or fall apart, at some point. The soil from the crushed plugs will extend into the lawn and cover the indentions made by aeration. In order to get plugs looser faster, pass them through a few passes with your lawn mower or rake them, then split them apart with the back of a shovel. : After crushing them, drag it across the lawn for sanding. Your lawn will flourish because of fresh nutrients in the soil.
• One suburban or urban rumor says that if you aerate you’ll ruin the effects of any herbicide you’ve used in the past. ‘It’s like every other “urban legend” or “suburban legend” except that it’s also completely untrue. Weed control that you sprayed on your lawn prior to aeration will not be affected at all.
• Post Aeration Management Plan – Treat your lawn the way it always does: water, fertilize and do the routine trims.

Final Thoughts

A healthy lawn will be even nicer if it’s aerated once a year. Not a lot of work and all you need to learn about this stuff and get basic jobs done in order to get the job done right.

If your lawn tells you the signs, you should aerate it. And your lawn will get better, nicer, healthier, and more fun.

For more information about Albuquerque landscaping and aeration, call R & S Landscaping at 505-271-8419.