How to Aerate a Lawn

Series Summary

Landscaping your front or back yard doesn't have to be a professional job. Home gardens provide a tranquil area for reflection and relaxation. Tending and enjoying a garden can lower blood pressure, ease anxiety and provide diversion in which to ponder various thoughts lingering in the subconscious. Even if you don't have much yard space, planting a small corner garden is a simple task you could complete in just an afternoon. In this free video series on lawn and garden care, let a professional landscaper explain simple ideas for improving a lawn and garden. Learn how to aerate a lawn and why it should be done. Find out about buying mulch for a lawn and garden. Finally, discover how to sharpen pruning tools and remove rust from most garden tools.

Video Transcript

"I'm Bill Elzey with Showplace Lawns. Let's talk a little bit about aerating your lawn. You aerate the lawn to keep it from being so compacted, to open it up, allow air to reach the grass roots because that is where the grass breathes. It also hopes in your watering in your nutrients. It gives them an easier path to flow. Also helps you to fight fungus diseases because of the air flow from the aeration. It's important enough to aerate that it should be down once a year. In our part of the world, we say March early April, maybe in to May, is a fantastic time. Again, you can do it the first part of October. But you got to be careful in the fall because some areas really get cold weather earlier and the last thing you want is to aerate and have a cold snap set in because that would destroy the roots. This beast right here is an aerator. It's the kind that pulls plugs. And as it pulls a plug as it aerates, it lays them over on top of the ground. I will usually tell folks who have never had this done that when we're finished, it looks like they had a dog convention. The plugs will break down with watering and rain, and work their way back in to the soil. It's something that usually doesn't last more than a week, if that, most of the time. But you want to be sure that the machine is one that does pull plugs, has these spoons on it, it's going to be well weighted. Like on this one, there's a weight here and on this roller up here, we fill it full of water. There's several different models on the market and available for rent. So they're not all exactly the same but the principle is the same. If you're pulling plugs like I was talking about, you should have something that looks similar to this. And that's what they will lay on top of the ground and then breaks back down in to the ground. What you're doing you're really reusing some nutrient value that was down in the ground, putting back on top, then working in back in again and getting a second use out of some of that. It's a heavy machine. You need to be careful with it. Practice a lot of caution. These things weigh more than most people. So be careful. The last thing anybody wants to see if somebody to hurt themselves working in their yard."