How Deep Should You Scarify? (How To Scarify Your Lawn Effectively)

hey guys how are you doing in this video today i'm going to explain how much you should be scarifying how deep you should be scarifying and how much thatch should you be taking out i'm going to show you how to scarify and the best way of doing it let's crack on so we're going to start off by explaining what scarifying is and what it does so scarifying is literally a case of raking it's raking the grass raking your lawn now there are obviously a few ways of doing it you can rake your lawn with a springbok rake which are these this is a bulldog one and it's got the metal reinforcing bar across the middle i like these because they're very rigid this one has lasted me at least four or five years cannot complain or fall back at all so they are good for raking small areas but on larger areas you need something bigger and faster you can also use these from wolfgarten with a scarifying blade attachment and that is the scarifying blade attachment and you can see there how sharp the blades are and they pivot backwards and forwards there and they're also interchangeable there and these have got i believe a 10-year warranty on them as well so they are fantastic pieces of kit and over years i've tried many then we use onto machine scarifiers essentially scarifiers verticutters lawmakers all do a similar sort of thing in that they are raking the lawn to a similar sort of way verticutters ar ie lawmakers or groomers as they can be called give a very gentle fine tickle and they help to cut across the runners of the grass because some species of grass have runners that run across the surface and when you cut into those it promotes new growth so it helps the lawn to thicken up some of them will have little metal spikes on a little bit like these but in a machine version and you can buy those from places like screw fix or audi for about 69 pounds something like that mid-range you've got these sort of things this is a still rl 540 scarifier and it's just an engine and blades in there that spin around and as you can see they rake the grass and you can see the grooves now you can raise the height of this machine using that handle there one being the highest the lightest set in and six is a deep aggressive setting you always start off on a high setting which is the number one so that is what scarifying is now we're going to explain why you need to scarify so we need to scarify because your lawn builds up a layer of thatch throughout the year and every year as that layer of thatch builds up which is like a thatched roof on a house and it stops airbraining nutrients from getting through nice and easily to the root zone if you don't do it that builds up and then the grass starts to suffer because it's not getting everything what it needs as easily so it starts to go brown it starts to go weak and a weak lawn will encourage weeds and must to get in then we have different areas of lawn some areas of lawn will have a lot of thatching and moss and some areas what are very much there's lots of different conditions that you'll notice it once you start raking some will be really thick and lots will come out in big piles and some won't be so i'm going to show you on this particular garden here this first lawn here is used a lot so he gets walked on a lot and the dogs play on it a lot and it's a little bit more compacted because of that reason as a result when we run the scarifier over on the middle setting you can see there is that's coming out and reasonable sized piles now when we go to the far end of the lawn you can see that the piles begin to get bigger and thicker the amount that comes out is just phenomenal really but all that there was choking the lawn so it's important that you remove it on an annual basis perhaps even twice a year lightly so that it does less um damage to the lawn now we have gone heavy on this fast section of the lawn on friday when we came and the reason is we want to go heavy because the customer is going to be over seeding using a slot seeding machine so we're getting it down to the soil layer soil layer and exposing all the soil even if we didn't do this a lot of this would come back just fine in around six to eight weeks as long as it gets some water and plenty of sunshine a bit of fertilizer so when you scarify it's important that you expose the soil whether it's a little bit or a lot if you scarify all the time twice a year you won't need to be heavy-handed you can just do a nice light tickle with the scarifier twice a year just to remove a small thin layer of thatch and as long as you are just exposing the soil and if you look here you can see the soil and you can see little grooves there okay this will all be fine this will all come back but we all remember going a little bit heavier on this so i'm going to show you now all the ways that you can scarify so with this springbok rake this is the most um the cheapest option the least expensive you'll literally just rake that's it what we've done is we've exposed the soil there and there's a little bit of fat which comes out now if you take the same rake and we'll go up to a thicker part of the lawn you'll see the difference in how much actually comes out when you scarify a thicker part of the lawn there's also moss in here because we are in a shaded spot moss likes dump and shady conditions so if you have damp and shade in your garden i.e clay lawns shaded corners under trees etc you're gonna see moss so let me show you now the same lawn thick area so just that one piece there we haven't got all the moss out so generally you would scarify in another direction when you've got to get more out but the amount that's come out is more you can just see one little area so that is the little hand springbok rake now let's try it with the wolfgarten rake okay so now we have the wolfgarten rake this is a little bit more money but it's a step up from the springbok rake and this will do a better job and save you more time but it is a little bit more aggressive because you've got these stronger blades very sharp and all you do you got to be light in your hand and you're just wafting it backwards and forwards across the lawn [Music] you soon get into a flow [Music] sometimes it digs in and just got to lighten up a bit you can just see how much faster that is and it's still done a fantastic job there you can see the grooves so the wolfgarten and i'll link to these products in the description but fantastic for smaller lawns and for smaller lawns then we go to the powered versions these are about 500 you can go up to powerful professional on machines for two and a half thousand pounds or you can get a screw fix 69.99 i do believe or something like that audi did something similar last year i don't know if they're still doing it but this is the still rl540 it's kind of mid-range so that is basically a powered version of this so it does it a lot faster you can still get something like this for a small lawn you can spend 500 or you can spend 100 pounds there's plenty on amazon ebay like i say screw fix and it's the same blades there inside which spin around so that is just a heavy heavier version a faster version of scarifying so that is it guys i'm going to show you now the scarifying with this on a thin area and then onto a thick area and you can just see how much comes out and then hopefully this will help you when you look to scarify your lawns once you've done your scarifying make sure you don't cut it for a few weeks and you should give it a good shortcut before you scarify and then keep it nice and moist just for a few weeks just to help it with the recovery the best times to scarify are spring and autumn we are doing this earlier in the season so the grass is generally a bit wetter and it makes it a bit heavier and harder work but it can still be done as long as the grass is actively growing okay let me show you this now so we're going to start off on a a lawn where it's compacted and there's less thatch in the lawn now thatch is a spongy layer of thatch which sits on top of the ground in and amongst the blades of grass you can feel it when you walk over it it will feel quite firm when there is not much statch and it will feel spongy when there is a lot of thatch so i'm gonna do it now on this more compacted less starchy area and then we'll go over there and you can see the difference in how much actually comes out okay how much how much faster was that all of that section in a second really and you can see the lines the grooves if we just rake some of this back you can see that it has thinned out by raking the thatch out of the ground if you go too aggressive you end you end up taking a lot of grass with it that is why areas where there is a lot of thatch you have to keep on top of them and do them regular because if not the moss will creep in and then by the time you've scarified the moss out there's not going to be much grass left and then you have bare soil which then encourages weeds and more moss to creep in and the grass is just weak so at that point you'd need to seed so if you'll scarify regular once or twice a year and if it's really flatty or areas are prone to thatch scarify maybe three times a year lightly to keep that level down and that will encourage a stronger grass plant now let's go and try this on the thicker area okay i'm going to show you now how much that actually comes out on this okay i think you're going to be pretty amazed at the difference in how much actually comes out because it's thick i'm going over it twice just see the difference huge great lumps which actually come out look it's phenomenal all of this is choking up your lawn you have to get this out all the time a couple of times a year maybe three try and avoid the heat of summer but certainly autumn and spring as you can see we can see the grooves so there you go guys this job was particularly thick from here all the way up and that took a full day yesterday and around 16 ton bags and about 15 or 16 black bean bags full so today we are back on a sunday to finish this off and thankfully this isn't as bad so it shouldn't take as long to finish off so really appreciate you watching please please do me one big thing give me one of those it'd be very much appreciated if you like this click that subscribe button it's down there it'd be very much appreciated see you guys on the next one [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: LawnRight Lawn Care

Views: 192,472

Keywords:

Id: CVScfj6jU7M

Length: 14min 31sec (871 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 28 2022