Aeration vs Dethatching // Which should YOU do??

so i think there is a lot of confusion when it comes to lawn care and the fall should you aerate should you de-patch especially when it accompanies over seeding which one should you do we're going to talk about it i'm going to start off by saying one of the most beneficial things that you can do for your lawn as a new homeowner is probably aerating i remember when i was in my lawn for the first time that first fall i aerated it and my lawn had never looked better because it was compacted and it just it got a chance to breathe and nutrients and water to be able to get back down into the soil to the roots and it was just a breath of fresh air for my lawn so that is it number one why you should aerate your lawn is if your lawn is compacted [Music] no that's not what you want now there are a lot of things that could contribute to compaction or contribute to not having a compaction issue things like keeping your lawn watered is going to help feeding at the right nutrients feeding it things like biostimulants humic acid that kind of stuff is going to help keep your soil from being compacted but driving heavy machinery over your lawn letting your lawn dry out all those kinds of things could help contribute to a compaction issue if you find yourself with a compaction issue don't worry no big deal the best way to solve it good old mechanical core aeration now if you have a big area i recommend going to your local rental shop renting a walk-behind gas unit split it with your neighbors to save on cost but it's going to be way quicker way easier but for me this section right here i'm using this good old-fashioned hand tool right here all right so just from doing that little area what i'm doing is i'm pulling plugs just like that they look like deer turds or something out on your grass if you've probably seen a sports field like this before growing up i always thought it was the weirdest thing ever but basically what it does it pulls those cores out of the ground plops them on top of the grass and then you can either leave them to break down or you can rake them up and get them out of there now one issue with leaving them on there is there's a chance that they can pull up weed seeds that have been laying dormant you put them up here that gives them a chance to germinate and grow and the next thing you know even though you haven't done anything else you've got weeds growing and you're like what the heck's going on that is a possible issue with core aerating so if you can see in here it leaves these holes in the ground right here what that does pulling this out of here it just kind of gives more room in the soil for the soil to kind of fill in the roots to spread it helps get water and nutrients down into the root zone where it can better be utilized it's just a very good thing so if your lawn is compacted i highly recommend doing a core aeration either leave these or if you can rake them up get them off the lawn a lot of people will back fill with sand that helps with drainage issues helps level the lawn out another good thing but that is an added step that we are not going to talk about right here so if you have a compacted lawn core aerating just like this whether with this unit here or with a powered machine is the number one thing in my opinion that you can do to solve that issue now i don't recommend doing it every fall you really only need to do it maybe every three four five years in between those years dethatching to me is the way to go so what the fatch layer is it's the top layer of the soil it's basically dead organic material that piles up it can help not help it can prevent water and nutrients and other things from getting down into the root zone into the soil which is not a good thing and then a lot of sports turf professionals believe that the thatch layer is where a lot of disease resides and that thick thatch layer contributes to disease and bug damage like grub damage and all this stuff so it is a good thing to get it out of here now i know a lot of you may come in the comments and say but a a thatch layer is good and it's healthy for your grass and i'm not going to argue with you on that but i will say that in my experience getting the thatch out of here it allows the lawn to breathe you can weed out or thin out the weak grass which allows especially if you have a spreading grass and if you're if you're real mowing you definitely want to do this more often because that allows your kentucky bluegrass or maybe you have bermuda grass to spread and fill in and have stronger grass plants here in your stand to turf yep just a dude laying in his lawn laying in his lawn one thing i want to show you real quick is if you look here it looks really healthy it's solid green it looks really really good especially for being in august however if you look down in here you can see hopefully you can see this on the camera that it's got some brown stuff in here we've got some lawn debris in here just like that and that's that's healthy that's a normal part of the turf life cycle especially cool season grass going through summer however now that we're going into fall we want to kind of take the dethatcher over this thin some of this out get this lawn debris and junk out of here so that the turf and the soil can breathe water and nutrients can get down into the soil easier and this stuff can just continue to get thicker and healthier and it can just thrive here in the fall all right so this here is the sun joe i've done videos on this or using this before this thing is awesome for a homeowner unit for a diyer it's sun joe quality which if you don't know what i mean by that it's plastic it's kind of flimsy however i've not had any issues with it and so this thing right here does a fantastic job doing exactly what we need it to here so you see underneath here hopefully you can see that nope so if you see this this is a dethatcher it's got these metal tines on here and what these do is they spin and they basically they dig into the top layer of the soil or into this lawn debris here and they just rip it up it doesn't it's not too aggressive where it rips out your really good grass but anything that's junk in here it's gonna get it out which is awesome another thing i like about this unit right here is it comes with a scarifier the scarifier is just a more thick blade it is way more aggressive i don't need to use that here but it does do a good job if you really want to get in there and rip some stuff up so if you don't want to buy this unit here you can also get a detaching rake which would be much cheaper it's terrible to use i'll be honest with you because it is a ton of work however if you're not afraid of work it does work work work work work work or you can go to your local rental shop just like the aerator and most of them will have a power rake or a dethatcher they may call it one or the other you could even use a slit seeder just not putting the seed in top and you can use a slit seeder to use as a dethatcher or a power rake and those all work as well if you don't want to use this machine right here because this one does take a cord and you have to plug it in they now have a sun joe battery powered unit never used it hoping to get my hands on one but i have heard really good things so that is another option here so on just that one little path i went probably four feet look at all this junk that it pulled out of there so you can imagine your entire lawn has this right here i mean it's just natural it's grass it's the life cycle your grass dies it grows it reproduces whatever um and so you've got this sitting in your lawn even if you're bagging your clippings up you're gonna have this stuff in your lawn because guess what i've bagged up the mo on this section right here ever since i planted it and i still have this stuff in my lawn it's just it's part of it so get that stuff out of there your lawn can breathe your lung can be healthier your lawn can be way better when it comes to overseeding in the fall should you aerate or should you detach before a lot of that has to do with again is your lawn compacted go ahead and aerate but then you also may want to defect because if you look over here this is the section we ran this sun joe over not only does it pull this junk up out of the ground but if you can see this down in there the top layer of the soil is kind of roughed up and so if you seed down into this your seed gets washed down into that you've already got your seed to soil contact you are good to go so that is my unscientific you know probably way too opinionated uh opinion on whether you should dethatch or aerate especially when it comes to seeding this is what i recommend i recommend the power rake or dethatch route when you're seeding bare dirt i recommend it whenever you're over seeding i recommend this even in the fall whenever you're not overseeding so that is just my opinion let me know your guys's thoughts down in the comment section below are you aerating are you dethatching are you over seeding do you have any opinion one way or the other am i a complete let me know either way [Applause] even if you don't agree with me i'm going to lay here on my comfy thick soft power rake dethatched and seated lawn we'll see you guys [Music]

Channel: The Lawn Whisperer

Views: 315,688

Keywords: lawn, lawn care, aeration, aerate, core, plug, dethatch, dethatching, sunjoe, debris, grass, junk, fall, overseed, overseeding, seed, yard, landzie, topdress, leveling, sand, bumpy, ugly lawn, fix, lawn fix, ugly, seeding, grow grass, grow, reel mow, golf course, humic acid, fertilizer, water, irrigation, watering, mow, edging, deep green, dark green, stripes, allett, swardman, lawn care nut, lawn whisperer, weeds, tenacity, kentucky bluegrass, tall fescue, ryegrass, sand level, soil

Id: KjKY_O1ZNfA

Length: 9min 31sec (571 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 17 2021