At some point in time all lawns will become compacted and to achieve a high-quality lawn, aeration is needed to improve the health of your lawn. Although aerating lawns is not that common and usually restricted to a professional turf environment, if your lawn can be aerated the benefits will show in your lawns overall health – air is an important component for your lawn to be healthy. Aeration can be done in many forms, the focus is to create opportunity for air, nutrients and water to enter your lawns soil profile while at the same time increasing drainage and decreasing thatch. In simple terms lawn aeration is the practice of perforation of the soil through physical injection.
It is recommended that any aeration that is carried out is done during either the Spring or Autum growing seasons to allow the turf to take advantage of the growing conditions. Additional to aerating the whole lawn, homeowners might just choose to focus on areas that are under stress through excessive use, pest attack, or suffer from excessive shade – aeration in these circumstances will greatly assist in the recovery of such areas.
Options to aerate your lawn are as follows;
- Hire a motorised lawn aerator that uses solid tines or hollow tines to create the holes
- Hire a contractor to aerate your lawn for you
- Use a standard garden fork
- Use spiked walking shoes purchased from a local garden supplier
- Use a hand corer or spiker purchased from a local garden supplier
