What Kind of Aerating is Best for My Lawn – Core Vs. Spike
They’re two different styles of aeration. The one you should not use is spike aeration. Generally, this is done with pitch fork or a special aeration tool that has spikes on the end of it. Most of the time this is a manual operation and you will jam the tool into the ground or jump on it to drive the spikes into the soil. The problem with this is that you are increasing the compaction of the soil. If you have clay soil, then you are creating small clay pots. The spikes are penetrating the soil and smoothing the sides of the hole. This in turn becomes hundreds if not thousands of small clay pots in your lawn. This decreases the absorption rate of the soil for the fertilizer and water. Bad!
The best style of aeration is with a core aerator. Core aeration is done with special aeration machine, available to rent at your local equipment rental business. It’s heavy and bulky and pulls out thousands of small plugs of soil from your lawn. These plugs are about the size of your pinky finger. They are often mistaken for rogue dog treasures!
We recommend aerating in the spring. It is highly recommended you combine aerating with de-thaching and fertilizing of your lawn all at the same time. It is an incredibly powerful process to get the lawn ready for the year. Try our spring lawn aeration packages by clicking for a free estimate button above or below.
We suggest dethaching immediately after aerating to break up the nutrient rich soil plugs that the aerator machine has pulled up. These plugs have a bunch of fertilizer in them, if you have used good topsoil and been fertilizing, then it mulches it back into your lawn and helps provide the lawn with more nutrients. Plus, you do not have to rake up all the core deposits from the aeration. If you were to just aerate your lawn only, it looks like there’s been thousands of dog bombs all over your yard.
We suggest that everyone aerate their yard at least once a year.
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