93.8% of Homeowners SKIP THIS STEP. Don't Be One of Them.

[Music] there is one thing that I do religiously Every Spring that I rarely see other homeowners do this process has helped my lawn become thicker Greener and saves me money on my water bill every year the great thing about the process I'm going to show you is that there are no fertilizers or chemicals involved and it only has a one-time cost after that it's just all manual labor today I'm going to teach you how to dethatch your lawn this process is extremely satisfying to do and it's actually one of my favorite things to do when it comes to lawn care if you've never heard of dethatching that's okay because I'm going to show you what it is and talk about the benefits that it has on your lawn I'm also going to talk about the differences between dethatching scarifying and power raking because those are commonly confused especially here on YouTube if you've watched any amount of videos on YouTube about lawn care in the past you'll know that all the nicest Lawns on YouTube all dethatch their grass that's because the thatching has so many benefits to it so what is detaching [Music] dethatching is the process of removing the dead layer of grass roots and other debris that accumulates between the soil and the grass blades now some thatch is normal but a thick layer of thatch can prevent water air and nutrients from getting to the roots of the grass which can lead to a thin and unhealthy lawn the dead material can also block your grass's ability to spread so how do we get that layer of thatch out of there well you really have three options you can dethatch you can scarify slash verticut or you can power rake all three of them will get thatched out to a certain degree but some accomplish certain things that the others don't let me try to explain so before I even get into the different types and people start losing their minds saying that I'm saying something wrong I just want to point out that different companies call these tools different things for example Alan and swordman call this tool a scarifier while Sun Joe and Greenworks call it a deep Thatcher well it calls this tool a dethatcher while Sun Joe calls it a scarifier and swordman calls it a virta cutter I know this sounds super confusing but I should be able to help you understand what tool is used for what by the end of this video just to make things easy I'm gonna go buy what the sun Joe and Greenworks calls them because they are the most affordable to homeowners and it's more likely that you'll own one of these machines rather than the expensive ones Jesus so first let's talk about dethatchers when it comes to dethatchers there are three different types a manual dethatcher a pull behind dethatcher or a power dethatcher when it comes to manual detachers they usually looks something like this they usually come with adjustable tines on each side of the rake one set of curved tines and another set that are straight these tines dig far enough into the ground to scrape out dead grass and thatch but not deep enough to damage the roots of the grass if you have a lawn around a thousand square feet or smaller this could be right for you but anything bigger than that and you're just asking for pain these things are back Breakers as it takes a lot of time and a lot of work to even cover a small area with these tools I would not recommend these to very many people this is definitely harder to pull than I was expecting [Music] I don't know why I was expecting that as it goes all the way through the grass well there this is this is oddly satisfying though this this really is backbreaking I couldn't imagine doing this for hours the next option is a pull behind the Thatcher you can pull these behind your four-wheeler or lawn tractor and it will pull up dead material and thatch as you drive around your lawn this is by far the least amount of work because you weren't pushing or raking anything manually but I will say this is probably the least effective of the three the reason why is because these tines are spaced out by quite a bit and while you're driving around the lawn it's going to be impossible to get perfect coverage you'll have to maneuver around objects and make strategic turns on your property line so your pattern will end up being kind of random in all over the place but if you have a large property this is going to be by far the most realistic option for you when it comes to power dethatchers they are much less work than manual detachers most of these machines are electric and come with interchangeable cartridges to do fashion cartridge usually has tines that look something like this you can set these tines to a desired height to rake over the grass this setting is essentially how aggressive you want the machine to be the goal of the poverty Thatcher is to get out the top layer of thatch and any debris sitting on top the lawn like dead grass and leaves this would be the best tool for getting out a lot of dead grass in small amounts of thatch like under a half of an inch but don't underestimate the power of these machines because they get out a ton of material there is one trappy thing that comes with these electric detachers though and that is the power cord it sometimes becomes a pain but if you're constantly moving away from the cord as you're dethatching you shouldn't have too much of an issue if the power cord is going to be an absolute deal breaker for you they also have battery powered options but they do cost about fifty dollars more the second option is the scarifier vertica the difference between the scarify attachment and the detaching attachment is that instead of using small thin tines it uses large blades to cut deep into the ground leaving small trenches this attachment would be used to get out large amounts of thatch that the detaching cartridge won't be able to reach it will also cut stolens or rhizomes to promote growth in spreading type grasses which can be a great thing for your lawn to help thicken it up also if you're planning to overseed after this process scarifying will make a perfect seed bed for your grass seed to germinate in I use this attachment when doing my renovation and you could tell perfectly where the blades cut right into the soil because the seeds started germinating in perfect rolls cut by the scarifier also if you have a lot of moss build up this is a great tool to help remove that the one downside to scarifying is that it won't pull out as much dead grass and material as the detaching cartridge will but it will definitely still pull up some it just won't get it all lastly we'll talk about power raking power rakes are essentially trying to accomplish the same thing as dethatching except they are usually gas powered and have metal Blades of teeth that look like this these machines are usually super aggressive and are used to get out large amounts of thatch but with the affordability of electric dethatching machines these days I would avoid using these just because they are crazy heavy expensive to rent in my opinion overly aggressive you can get the job done a lot easier with a smaller machine if you're planning on dethatching your lawn I would highly recommend doing it in either the springtime or the fall time if you have cool season grass definitely avoid the summer because it can be too stressful for your grass now imagine how much water and nutrients are being soaked into all this dead grass that's going to waste by doing this process you're going to save so much money and water so as you can see obviously this makes a huge mess and I went over this light I'm actually going to go over this a few more times but you can see how much material comes up one of the suckiest Parts about dethatching is the cleanup you can either rake this stuff you can blow it or you can use a rider and kind of suck everything up but you're going to have a lot of material when you're done make sure you have somewhere to put it or somewhere to bring it after you're done with the process of dethashing or any of these other processes your lawn is going to look stressed and look pretty beat up but don't be nervous that you went too far because I promise your grass can handle plenty of pain but I would recommend giving it a nice shot of slow release fertilizer to help it recover after this you can see one of my favorite slow release fertilizers in this video right here I'll see you over there now get off my lawn foreign

Channel: LAWN LIFE

Views: 1,959,701

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Id: EL9d5W_ZU24

Length: 8min 0sec (480 seconds)

Published: Wed May 10 2023