Differences between power raking and Lawn Aeration. What is power raking? What is lawn aeration?

[Music] [Music] this is the paestum on Jinja thanks for tuning in today I wanted to go over the key differences between lawn aeration and power raking let's go check it out now to start out understanding the key differences between each one of these machines is understanding what Thatch's now granted both these machines are claimed to be Dee Thatcher's now if you look here I've got a core sample and with a ton of thatch this is about three quarters inches of thatch and you can see it's a it's basically a giant root ball it's got a lot of veins of roots in there that are kind of growing on top of each other now there's really good news about this this is where most of your decomposition is occurring this is where most of your beneficial bacteria is forming so you want to have a healthy thatch layer what thatch is not what most people think it is is dead grass and this is my whole point that I've been pushing most people think this right here is that and so what people have been doing is they have been mowing with a mulching machine and leaving this all over the ground now at higher altitudes this does not decompose into the thatch layer and this is what causes problems now having a general understanding what these machines are and what they do is going to help you make the right decision for the right application so let's go check these machines out here real quick on the Left we have the Bluebird power rake on the right we have the Ryan lawn air 5 machine now these are my weapons of choice when I'm looking at these applications now both of them kind of serve different purposes but let's just take a quick glance at the machines you'll notice that the Bluebird power rake kind of sits flat on the ground and let's go ahead and look underneath now you'll see we've got these disks now these disks are just gonna spin they spin pretty quickly and they hit the ground now what that's going to do is that's going to pull up the debris that's sitting right on top of the soil and that's the whole point of this machine don't overthink this machine now taking a look at the Ryan lawn air 175 pounds it's got 225 pound weights right here that are completely removable and it's mostly about weight distribution with this machine and this is the machine that is going to pull these little core plugs that most moms can't stand because the kids like to throw them but this is fully removable and it's a pretty big weight so I'm going to the back of the machine here it's completely different than the power rake we have all these tines now they're they're cut so they go about three inches into the ground on average and that's about what you need to get a good core aeration there are so many benefits to love mechanical aeration but one of them is 2d compact the soil now this allows for more oxygen water minerals and nutrients to enter deeper into the soil and allows the roots to chase them now the one thing that I like to remind people about grass is the only thing it wants to do is to multiply so when you pull these plugs it's going to basically push away and fill in the empty spaces and that's why it's important this grass is always trying to push outward so it gives it a chance to do what grass does best and that's to multiply so the magical question guys how often should you be here rating your lawn well it all comes down to soil type if you have sandy soils the best time to aerate one time in the spring time for those of you guys who have clay based soil you could aerate 2 to 3 times per year and that's the recommended dosage now if you're just going to be aerating one time of year because that's all the budget holds for one time in the fall is the best time to do it to leave the plugs or not to leave the plugs that is the question but the answer might surprise you this thatch layer holds a ton of micronutrients in it the last thing you want to do is to strip these micro nutrients from the soil also for those of you guys have clay based soil and you pulled in a lot of topsoil your topsoil sits on the top layer so when you strip these plugs you're just stripping your topsoil now in the case of my lawn I'm actually using a lawn aeration as a tool to help with my shallow root syndrome my roots have kind of trained themselves to go upward because of daily watering and shallow watering now what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to thin that thatch layer out but I'm trying to get the roots stimulated enough to grow downward now providing the space and removing the compaction is what's going to open the ground up to allow those roots to want to go down my suggestion is to get the lawn aerated before the ground temperatures reach 55 degrees in the springtime this will allow you to get a good pre-emergent down so you don't have to deal with weed seeds coming down and germinating in these holes the major point of using a mechanical aerator is to help with compassion is the quickest way that you can decomp act Alon assuming you're getting some water down into the soil so the question is how often should I be power raking well the answer might surprise you it's about every three to five years we want to leave that accordion layer of thatch alone as best as we can proper watering is going to be your number one thing watering two to three times a week as opposed to daily more minutes less days is your general rule of thumb now the other thing is mulching if you're a mulching properly you shouldn't have a problem with thatch but if you're just leaving dead grass behind and saying that your mulching you may have to power rake every single season depending on how much debris is left now one thing that you can do to really help yourself out at the end of the season is to do an end to the season short mow when the outside temperatures have permanently gone below 50 degrees this will allow you to cut the top of the crown off and to suck up a lot of that debris that your lawnmower has naturally left behind now another one of my favorite question is how do I know it's time to power rake let me show you so here's a quick way that you could tell if you need to power rake or not you can see this area here the grass blades are actually fairly green now when we get into it we start pushing open you can see all this dead matter inside but more importantly when we pinch it out we get a significant amount of dead debris now you can see when you get a handful like this it's time now if you were only to get this much or less I would say leave it alone because this is decomposing matter that's very beneficial you've got a problem it is to purchase a matching rake now this rake is going to help pull a lot of the debris to the surface to see if you guys have a problem I like to do a 2 foot by 2 foot section and if you get a significant amount of grass out then you know you've got a problem now you can see instantly before your eyes the color change in this area now a lot of your color is being crowded not by thatch but by dead grass now a lot of you guys call this [Music] and there is some truth to it because you get root balls which is part of the thatch layer and the whole point to dethatching is to thin out the thatch layer but for the most part it removes debris from the surface and helps free up the soil so your fertilizers will pass and the water will also evaporate and you get that oxygen transfer which promotes healthy growing now I put the dead grass back so I kind of show you the significance of this dead grass I just pulled that in that 2 by 2 foot section it's a lot of matted grass now the problem that we face is your fertilizers are gonna have a really rough time getting through this now you could bandaid it by using a granular fertilizer which is what most people do but your liquid fertilizers and your micronutrients in the liquid fertilizers they're not going to penetrate this layer in my opinion and that's why it's really important to remove this so once you remove it you can actually get to the soil now just to show you guys now that I've removed that dead grass you can physically see the soil which is a huge improvement to what it was before putting that back there's no physical way that your fertilizers going to be able to penetrate that now I know what you're thinking hey eventually they'll work their way through well that is partially true with the granular but with the liquids they get bound up in this dead grass and they don't pass if you get that layer dead debris sitting on top it's time to power rake you don't want this to be an excess because it's going to cloud your color but also if you get too much that debris up there it's going to suffocate that thatch layer and it doesn't allow it to breathe properly and it chokes out the microbial action but it also causes problems it doesn't allow the evaporation to occur gets stuck in there and then the Sun comes down and bakes it and causes abnormal fungal activity so what is the absolute best time to power rake well that might surprise you but it's going to be the fall time it allows that bacteria to set back in allows the lawn to rest over the winter time ready for a new growing season now if you missed that window in the fall time first thing in the spring before the ground temperatures get to 55 degrees in my opinion it's gonna be the best time to get that done now can you power Drake when it's hot well of course you can absolutely I'm living proof of it if you guys haven't seen my channel this is my lawn that's exactly what I did I power raked when it was a hundred degrees outside if you've got way too much of the sediment way too much build up it's time to get rid of it so you could actually get everything breathing together to grow again the most important part of the power rake is going to be the cleanup now there's no sense in running the power rake if you're not gonna clean it up properly because you're just gonna have the problem the very next fall or the very next spring now my opinion these power rake machines is cheaper and miles below 3000 dollars they're only going to get 70 to 80% of the thatch or the the debris that's sitting on top of the soil so it's important to go after it a third pass with a rake or a thatch rake to remove the excess debris at the very end so if you asked me which one of these machines does a better job of removing fatch well that's going to be your lawn aerator it's my opinion that the power rake machine does a great job of removing debris now it can thin out the top layers of the thatch but it's really not going to go through the entire thatch layer now another question I get quite often is can I run both these machines on the same lawn on the same day my opinion on this pretty simple absolutely you can the machine on the right here is going to get rid of the dead debris sitting on top of the soil the machine on the left is actually going to get rid of the actual batch and pull it up now if it were me I would run the power rake first do the cleanup and then run your core aeration second the reason being is you don't want to miss out on those micronutrients getting back into the soil that are caught up in the actual fats layer you can clearly see just by looking at the two machines they serve two completely different purposes my opinion the aerator is the only one that actually removes thatch completely it's going to penetrate through all the layers it's going to pull that up to the surface and provide a gapping space where it actually removes the thatch now on the flip side we do get some fetch thinning and thatch removal from the power rake but it doesn't do the same job its primary objective is to free up debris that's causing issues with micronutrients and fertilizer from getting to the soil and also oxygen and water transport you guys have any questions or concerns hit me up in the comment love to help you guys out and don't forget to subscribe to my channel you just remember sharing is caring so next time guys [Music]

Channel: Pest and Lawn Ginja

Views: 983,577

Rating: 4.8890119 out of 5

Keywords: pest and lawn ginja, ginja, this is my lawn, what's wrong with my lawn, dethatch, thatch, aeration, ryan lawnaire iv, bluebird power rake, ams soil probe, aeration vs dethatching lawn, aeration vs power raking, power raking your lawn, power raking vs dethatching, what is a power rake, what is a lawn aerator, power rake, thatch rake, how to remove thatch, diy power rake, diy, diy thatch rake, diy aerator, how to aerate, how to power rake, how to dethatch a lawn

Id: y-MTtwtzq84

Length: 13min 18sec (798 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 25 2018