Photo by Evan Dvorkin
Everyone admires and wants a beautiful yard. It’s refreshing to the eyes and calming to the mind. To achieve and keep the property breathtakingly beautiful and healthy, you must regularly aerate your lawn. Will that do anything? Let’s find out.
What Is Aeration?
Aeration is an essential part of maintaining a healthy lawn. It involves perforating the soil with small holes. Doing so will allow water, oxygen, and nutrients to easily reach the roots.
Aeration also relieves soil compaction and encourages the grass to grow more roots, helping them grow faster and healthier.
Why Aerate Lawns In Utah?
Air, water, and nutrients must reach the thatch layer to allow roots to grow longer, thicker, and healthier. In Utah, homeowners are faced with the challenge of developing and managing a healthy and vigorous lawn because of its weather condition, especially during winter months.
Lawn dying happens when the snow thaws and soaks your grass. You can prevent this from happening by aerating your lawn. But that’s not the only reason. Here are a few more:
Compacted Soil
A lawn can get compacted for several reasons. One of those reasons is when your lawn is used as a neighborhood playground or racetrack. Children and pets continually running around can also compact soil. Of course, vehicles or small equipment driven on the property can also cause this.
If your lawn has compacted soil, grass doesn’t stand a chance against heat or low rainfall. The grass will lose its rich, healthy color. It will be then gradually thin and die. Fortunately, aerating them with holes, at least once, can revive it.
Thatch Buildup
Excessive thatch buildup is another reason to aerate the lawn. It’s good that your grass’ roots grow for them to become lush, but excessive growth can lead to a thatch buildup. The dead roots, stems, and leaves can accumulate to the point wherein sprayed water can’t reach the roots.
You can easily detect a thatch buildup when the lawn beneath your feet feels spongy and dry. If it feels dry and spongy, immediately check if the thatch layer is more than half-an-inch thick. To do that, use a shovel. Dig out a small portion of the lawn—at least four inches deep will do
If the thatch is more than a half-inch thick, aerate.
Prolonged Dry Conditions
If you live in a place outside Utah where there’s prolonged dry conditions and drought, your lawn will need constant aeration. That will ensure your lawn will get absorbed fast by the soil instead of just evaporating because of heat.
Lawn Care Service
A good indication that you need to aerate your lawn is if the soil is hard to the touch, rainwater collects where it should be absorbed, or the grass looks unhealthy. If you don’t have aeration tools or equipment, you can hire a lawn care service provider to do the aeration for you.