If you know the steps to aerate a lawn, then it’s definitely a job you can do yourself. By following my favorite four-stage process, you’ll learn how to aerate your lawn and why it’s so important to make it a part of your lawn maintenance routine. So, before you call in the professionals, let’s take a look at an easy way to aerate the lawn and go over my favorite method.
How to Aerate a Lawn (The Short Explanation)
To achieve the best results, you should tackle lawn aeration as a four-stage process: planning, preparation, aeration, and aftercare. Here is how to aerate a lawn in ten easy steps.
- Know When to Aerate Your Lawn
- Understand Your Soil Type
- Select the Type of Aerator
- Mow Your Lawn
- Dethatch Your Lawn
- Water Your Lawn
- Mark Out Your Irrigation System
- Aerate Your Lawn
- Leave the Cores on Your Lawn
- Apply Fertilizer
Why It’s Important to Aerate Your Lawn
The purpose of lawn aeration is to reduce soil compaction. Unfortunately, issues such as high clay content soil and high traffic areas result in the soil of your lawn compacting and becoming increasingly denser. This condition makes it very difficult for your lawn to grow and obtain the key elements it needs to thrive. Here are the main improvements you’ll achieve by aerating your lawn.
- Improved Drainage – Due to the tightly packed particles of soil, compacted soil has a reduced ability to absorb water. Aeration creates an opening within the soil to allow water to effectively soak into the ground and reach down to the roots of your lawn. Not only does this assist the roots, but it also improves the general drainage of your lawn, reducing issues such as standing water and flooding.
- Increased Air Exchange – In order for the grass to grow, the roots need to be able to exchange air. This exchange requires the roots of your lawn to absorb oxygen and expel carbon dioxide. If the roots cannot breathe, your lawn will go into survival mode and eventually die.
- Improved Nutrient Absorption – If the upper section of your lawn’s soil bed is over-compacted, the surface nutrients from decomposing clippings and fertilizers will become trapped and remain on the surface. Aeration creates pathways for nutrients to travel down through the soil, providing the roots with a vital food source.
- Increase Root Growth – Your lawn’s smaller roots, such as the tertiary roots, require loose soil to extend and mature and increase the overall spread and depth of your lawn’s root systems. This increased root structure allows your lawn to acquire water and nutrients from a much larger area within the soil structure. The loosening of soil through aeration is a key process to enable your lawn to mature and become more self-sufficient.
What You’ll Need to Aerate Your Lawn (Equipment List)
To follow my favorite method for aerating your lawn, you’ll need a selection of equipment and materials. This list will tell you everything you need, including all the necessary items for preparation and aftercare. After all, aeration is more than just running an aerator over your lawn.
- Watering System
- Lawn Mower
- Landscaping Flags
- Aerator
- Fertilizer
- Fertilizer Spreader
How to Aerate Your Lawn (Step-By-Step Guide to My Fav Method)
The best way to aerate a lawn is to break the process down into four stages. Because everybody’s situation is different, and not two lawns are the same, this will help you get a clear understanding of what your lawn actually needs. So, here are the four stages you will undertake when deciding how to aerate a lawn.
Stages of Lawn Aeration
- Planning
- Preparation
- Aeration
- Aftercare
Planning Lawn Aeration
Before you begin any type of aeration task, it’s important to have a firm understanding of what your lawn needs. Knowing this information will help you select an aerator and help you understand which areas might need additional attention. So let’s take a look.
Affected Areas
Knowing which areas are worse affected by compaction in your lawn is a key part of aeration. For example, if you have a section of lawn that receives a lot of foot traffic, then this section will likely be more compacted than, say, a section of lawn that doesn’t get much traffic.
Taking my yard as an example, I have a section of lawn between my garage and house that gets walked across several times a day. Now I know that this area is definitely more compact than the middle of my rear lawn. So, within my planning, I’ll make a note that this bad area will need more passes with my aerator.
Soil Type
Next is to understand the makeup of your soil. If you have high clay-content soil, then it’s guaranteed that your soil will need regular deep aeration. But if your soil is loamy or sandy, you’re likely dealing with little compaction. So your soil type will help determine the type of aerator you will need to use.
Aerator Machine Selection
Now that you know what you want to achieve, it’s time to select an aerator. So you have different options when selecting an aerator. For example, spike aerators use a metal spike to puncture a hole in the soil, and a core aerator removes a plug of soil from the ground. In addition, each of these designs is available in various sizes that penetrate the ground at different depths.
Keep in mind that it’s not always necessary to go big and deep, and you might only need a smaller machine. But, in my experience, bigger is better. But this isn’t set in stone. It’s what works best for you and your lawn.
Aeration Preparation
Now that you have a good understanding of aeration planning, let’s go over the steps you’ll need to complete during the preparation stage. Following these four steps will help you achieve successful aeration.
Mow Your Lawn
Before I head out to aerate my lawn, I make sure to mow it first. Mowing helps to reduce the thickness of the grass and gives the aerator a better chance of penetrating the soil deeper. If you don’t mow before aerating, the extra height of your grass will raise the aerator further off the soil and limit how deep it can penetrate the ground. If you are using an aerator with shallow spikes, you could easily be losing 50% or more of the depth your aerator can achieve.
Dethatch Your Lawn
Just like the length of your grass affects how deep your aerator can penetrate the soil, so will the thickness of the thatch. Like long grass, thick thatch will lift the aerator off the soil bed and reduce the depth at which your aerator can penetrate the soil. If you choose to use a large heavy aerator, thatch won’t be as big of an issue since the weight of the machine compresses the thatch. But if you are using a lightweight residential aerator, your machine may not have enough weight to compress the thatch.
So, an easy way to overcome this issue is to grab your dethatcher before you begin to aerate.
Water Your Lawn
The third preparation step before aerating is to water your lawn a day or so before you plan to aerate. This method will give the water enough time to be absorbed and soften the soil. The reason I suggest that you water your lawn a day or so before aerating is so that your lawn isn’t too wet. If you try to use your aerator soon after watering, you’ll end up with a really muddy situation.
I made this mistake once before. I jumped on my aerator straight after watering, and let’s just say I wasn’t aerating for long. It was a complete mess, and my aerator was just getting clogged up. So, giving your lawn a good 24h to soak up the water is definitely the way to go.
Mark Out Your Irrigation System
Finally, before aerating, you’ll want to mark out the location of the irrigation heads around your yards. Doing this will help you avoid any potential damage that might be caused by your machine when you are aerating. This is a very important stage during the preparation process and should not be missed. A pack of landscaping flags comes in really handy when marking out irrigation heads, and you can pick them up at our local box store for just a few bucks.
The Process of Aerating
Now it’s time to get aerating. So, grab your aerator, and let’s look at the aeration process and what is involved. Here are the four steps for how to aerate a lawn.
Aerator Setup
The first stage is to set up your aerator. You can easily find out what is needed to set up your machine by looking through the owner’s manual. Usually, the setup will include items such as setting up the handlebars, adjusting the height, adding weights, and adding water to a water tank. Now, these items will vary depending on the type of aerator you use.
So, take your time and check what is needed first. Not only will this make your aerator safe to use, but it will also ensure you get the best out of your machine.
Aerating the Lawn’s Perimeter
With the aerator all set up, it’s time to make your first pass. Now, I like to start by making a few passes around the lawn’s perimeter so that the few feet around the edge are done. This process gives you more room to turn so that you don’t have to keep walking through your flower beds and don’t miss small areas when turning.
Making Passes
With the perimeter complete, it’s time to make passes up and down your lawn just as if you were mowing it. That’s really all there is to using an aerator. You just need to make sure that you don’t miss any spots.
Making Double Passes
Earlier, I mentioned that some areas might be more compacted than others and that you might need to aerate these sections twice. So, run your aerator over these areas again using the same process. Now, depending on the aerator you are using, you might be able to see the holes made by the spike or the cores, which will help you line up your machine so that you can offset the penetration.
You want to try to avoid penetrating into the exact same holes, as this won’t give you the benefits of the double pass. Now, this can be tricky if you plan to aerate with the same up and down passes. So, I make a point of changing up the direction and swapping to going side to side instead of up and down. Doing this really reduces hitting the same holes.
Aeration Aftercare
So technically, that’s the process of aerating over, but there are a couple of extra steps I always like to take to get the most out of aeration. Let’s take a look at my favorite aftercare steps.
Don’t Pick Up the Cores
If you are using a core aerator, you might be tempted to pick up all of the cores that your aerator drops. I understand why you might want to do this, as the cores spread across your lawn will look messy. Well, doing this would be a big mistake.
So instead, you want to allow the cores to break down and work their way back into your lawn. After all, there is nothing wrong with the dirt in the cores. So, what do you do? Well, these cores will disappear and become part of the upper level of the soil after you have watered and mowed your lawn a few times. It might take a few weeks, but it’s well worth the wait.
Add Some Fertilizer
Finally, the last step of my how to aerate a lawn process is to fertilize your lawn. Now I like to use a slow-release fertilizer that will break down slowly over a couple of months so that my lawn receives a constant feed. Just remember to water straight after applying fertilizer with your spreader.
Alternative Methods of Lawn Aeration
Are there any other methods you can use to aerate your lawn other than using a standard aerator? Well, there are actually lots of different types of aerators available you can use to achieve the same outcome. The only difference in the process is that you swap out the aerator for a machine that suits you better. Why would you want to use a different aerator?
Typically, the size of your lawn and how badly your lawn is compacted will determine what machine you’ll want to use. For example, if you have a small yard, then a small residential walk-behind spike machine will probably be the best fit for you. But if the soil is badly compacted, then you want to use a walk-behind core aerator for better aeration.
On the other hand, if you have a large lawn, then you probably won’t want to have to walk behind a small aerator as this will more than likely take you hours to complete. So, a towable aerator or a ride-on aerator will make for a much quicker job.
So, if you are working out how to aerate lawn yourself, take your time with the planning stage, as this will make the following stages much easier.
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