What is lawn aeration?
Aeration is an essential mechanical process to reduce soil compaction and allow beneficial air water and nutrients to more easily get into the soil. It will make your lawn better!
Why should I aerate my lawn?
Healthy soil need lots of air spaces. Over time from due to use of the lawn and the changing seasonal weather, those spaces get squashed.
What happens if you don’t aerate your lawn?
- Reduces water, air and nutrients from getting into the soil. Your lawn will never look it’s best.
- Reduced the vital microbial activity in the soil
- Lawn will be less responsive to fertilisers
- Water wont drain so easily, causing saturated soil in Winter and evaporation in Summer with a drier lawn.
- Moss will easily grow and spread as water does not drain easily.
- Grass roots struggle to grow, leaving the grass plan less able to thrive and fend off diseases and recover from damage.
When is the best time of year to aerate a lawn?
Aeration can be done when ever the soil conditions are suitable, typically Autumn to Spring. The soil need to be firm enough for the machine’s weight but not too hard so the tines can’t get into the soil. Lawn Tiger use a range of different aeration machines to suit the seasonal conditions. We prefer mid to late Autumn and Spring for aerations to help develop the soil and grass health. During Summer we provide many customers a spiked aeration that can give the lawn a real boost especially if you plan to water.
Our recommendation is to aerate your lawn at least once per year.
Which type of aeration tools or machines are best?
- A garden fork. These will create holes in the soil but if you move the fork back and forward you end up causing more compaction. We don’t recommend this option unless the soil conditions are perfect and even then you may not get very good results.
- A manual spiker tool or shoes. These slightly better than a garden fork but do not reduce soil compaction. They don’t penetrate very far in the soil, have a limited benefit but are better than nothing.
- A manual hollow tine tool. The will help relieve some soil compaction, not as well as a machine. They are very hard work and will require lots of time and patience as the hollow tines will clog up on clay soils.
- A professional aerator machine . This is the only way to effectively aerate your lawn. These machines have more powerful engines that drive the tines deep into the soil and the action also heaves the soil slightly creating cracks and fissures in the soil (remember the essential air spaces we mentioned above). The lawn will grow deeper and more widespread roots so the grass will be in better condition in the months ahead. Lawn Tiger only use this type of professional, heavy duty machine as we know it gives the required results. We have a range of solid tine, hollow tine and fracture tine options to suit each lawn. Our most powerful machine will create twice as many holes and twice as deep as any other domestic lawn care machine, up to 12cm for super added benefit for the lawn.
Get help from the experts
If aeration seems like too much work, get in touch with us for some friendly advice on how we can improve your lawn. Call 01293 974358 or email [email protected]. To get started sooner, use our quick and easy online quote tool
