Keeping Your Lawn Fresh
Your front lawn is one of the most attractive parts of the front of your house.
It frames the garden and gives your house character.
You may keep a meticulously groomed front lawn, you may mow, water, weed, and fertilize.
But if your lawn seems to be be missing that little extra green and those irritating weeds seemingly pop up as soon as you've finished pulling them out, you may want to consider aerating your lawn.
The reason behind aeration is that with time the soil gets too compacted, with all that stepping around to keep your flowers at their best, there becomes no pore space for the grass to extend its roots and absorb enough nutrients and water to keep it fresh and green.
When you aerate you are making little air holes in your lawn so that the soil has space to spread out becoming less compact and leaving room for the grass roots to soak up water and nutrients making it the lush green you've been looking for.
How to Know if Your Lawn Needs Aeration Do you want to know if your lawn needs aeration? Here is a quick and easy test, you will need a screwdriver.
Poke your lawn with the screwdriver, if the screwdriver easily penetrates the soil you are good to go.
If the screwdriver is met with resistance, your soil needs to be aerated.
If you tried this test and still are not too sure about your results you can try another, more thorough test.
Dig up a piece of your turf, about 6 inches in area and 6 inches deep.
Look at the roots, if they only extend an inch or two then your lawn is due for aeration.
Various Ways to Aerate Your Lawn The least expensive way to aerate your lawn is to use a gardening fork.
All you do is push the fork into the ground and move it back and forth two or three times.
This method is only suitable for a small lawn as it is quite a lot of hard work.
Your next option would be to use a sod-coring tool.
This tool removes small plugs of soil and deposit them atop the grass.
If your lawn is too big then you will need a powered aeration machine.
This machine does the same job as the sod-coring tool but uses much less of your valuable time and muscles.
The Proper Way to Aerate Your Lawn Before you begin the aeration process be sure you have marked areas on your lawn where pipes or power lines are running below the surface of the soil.
Begin to poke those holes in the lawn in the same direction similar to if you were mowing the lawn, this keeps your lawn looking freshly aerated instead of messy.
The best time to aerate is when active growth is taking place.
These times would be early summer or that lovely time just before autumn sets in.
It frames the garden and gives your house character.
You may keep a meticulously groomed front lawn, you may mow, water, weed, and fertilize.
But if your lawn seems to be be missing that little extra green and those irritating weeds seemingly pop up as soon as you've finished pulling them out, you may want to consider aerating your lawn.
The reason behind aeration is that with time the soil gets too compacted, with all that stepping around to keep your flowers at their best, there becomes no pore space for the grass to extend its roots and absorb enough nutrients and water to keep it fresh and green.
When you aerate you are making little air holes in your lawn so that the soil has space to spread out becoming less compact and leaving room for the grass roots to soak up water and nutrients making it the lush green you've been looking for.
How to Know if Your Lawn Needs Aeration Do you want to know if your lawn needs aeration? Here is a quick and easy test, you will need a screwdriver.
Poke your lawn with the screwdriver, if the screwdriver easily penetrates the soil you are good to go.
If the screwdriver is met with resistance, your soil needs to be aerated.
If you tried this test and still are not too sure about your results you can try another, more thorough test.
Dig up a piece of your turf, about 6 inches in area and 6 inches deep.
Look at the roots, if they only extend an inch or two then your lawn is due for aeration.
Various Ways to Aerate Your Lawn The least expensive way to aerate your lawn is to use a gardening fork.
All you do is push the fork into the ground and move it back and forth two or three times.
This method is only suitable for a small lawn as it is quite a lot of hard work.
Your next option would be to use a sod-coring tool.
This tool removes small plugs of soil and deposit them atop the grass.
If your lawn is too big then you will need a powered aeration machine.
This machine does the same job as the sod-coring tool but uses much less of your valuable time and muscles.
The Proper Way to Aerate Your Lawn Before you begin the aeration process be sure you have marked areas on your lawn where pipes or power lines are running below the surface of the soil.
Begin to poke those holes in the lawn in the same direction similar to if you were mowing the lawn, this keeps your lawn looking freshly aerated instead of messy.
The best time to aerate is when active growth is taking place.
These times would be early summer or that lovely time just before autumn sets in.