Spring has sprung in Georgia, and along with the warm weather comes spring cleaning and caring for your lawn. If you haven’t started already, now is the best time to focus on getting your yard in shape and ready for an upcoming season of outdoor fun. One beneficial lawn technique often overlooked this time of year is aeration. What exactly is lawn aeration, and how does it benefit your lawn? Duncan’s Green Team is here to answer all your questions regarding this favorable technique and help you understand the process.
Why Is Aeration Needed?
While everyone wants to keep up with the Jones and have the most beautiful, lush lawn, let’s face it, your yard is also meant to be used. It’s an extension of your home, providing an extra playroom for the kids, space for your pets to run, and an area to hold your family barbecues.
But add in the use of heavy lawn equipment and climate stressors, and all these things can take a toll on your turf. When this happens, your soil can become compacted, or a layer of thatch can build on your lawn. Both create an environment in which your soil becomes too dense and is unable to absorb essential nutrients, sunlight, water, and oxygen. No longer able to receive the elements it needs to stay alive, your grass may start to turn brown, wither and eventually die.
What Is Aeration?
Lawn aeration uses a machine that distributes plugs across your lawn. When pulled out, they poke holes, allowing air, water, and vital nutrients to once again filter through your soil. Routine lawn aeration allows these important elements to reach your root system. As your root system is like the brain of your lawn, ensuring it receives these items helps your turf grow strong, remain healthy, and become less resistant to disease weeds and insect infestations. But the benefits of aeration don’t end there.
Other advantages of lawn aeration include:
- A reduction in soil compaction
- A break-down of thatch build-up
- Stronger, deeper roots
- Resistance to drought
- Better drainage
- Elimination of water runoff and puddling
- And many others
When Should I Have Aeration Performed?
Aeration is best performed during periods of rapid growth and when that occurs depends on the type of grass you have. Here in Georgia, we have both warm and cool-season kinds of grass. Warm-season grasses such as zoysia, bermudagrass, and centipede grow rapidly in the spring, making right now the ideal time to aerate. Having warm-season grasses aerated now will help them grow faster, greener, and thicker for the summer. Cool-season grasses such as fescue, and Kentucky bluegrass are better aerated in the fall.
Our trained and knowledgeable technicians at Duncan’s know the difference between the two types of grasses and can better tell you the most appropriate times and how often to have lawn aeration performed.
We recommend having aeration performed twice a year to help keep up with the types of clay soils we have in metro Atlanta.
Maintaining Your Lawn After Aeration
Once your lawn has been aerated, we recommend implementing the following tips for best results:
- Maintain a proper irrigation schedule. This includes watering deeply to get to the root system, but infrequently so you don’t oversaturate.
- Fertilize your lawn.
- Try to stay off the grass for a few weeks
- Mow sparingly but check it frequently.
Get Your Lawn Professional Aerated With Duncan’s Green Team This Spring
Duncan’s Green Team has been serving residents and businesses in the metro Atlanta area for 50 years. Find out more about our aeration services by visiting our website and filling out our contact form today. Or, give us a call at (770) 478-0098.
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