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Are you trying to get your lawn as lush, green and healthy as possible? When combined with other routine maintenance and service tasks, aerating your lawn will help you achieve the thick, healthy lawn you’ve always wanted.
However, aerating your lawn is a task only reserved for certain times of the year. The more your lawn is used for things like playing with the kids, hosting parties and enjoying other warm-weather outdoor activities, your grass and soil become compacted and require aeration. In Maryland and other northeastern states, you’ll want to aerate and seed your lawn in the fall.
With the winter months quickly approaching, the fall season offers the best opportunity to aerate and seed your lawn in states such as Maryland.
There are many benefits to aerating your lawn, but it’s important to understand the proper timeframe and techniques for performing this task. If you’re wondering when you should aerate your lawn in Maryland, then here are some helpful tips and timeframes to get you started toward creating a healthier, greener and thicker lawn that’s the envy of your neighborhood.
Before you get started creating the lush, green lawn of your dreams, it’s first important to understand what lawn aeration is and the different ways to do it. Lawn aeration is a process that allows air, nutrients and water to adequately penetrate your lawn’s surface by punching holes in it. Your lawn’s topsoil essentially becomes clogged from things like dead organic material and compression.
When dead organic material builds up between your grass and soil, it creates a barrier that prevents vital nutrients such as sunlight, air and water from penetrating the ground and feeding your lawn. This thick layer of compacted, dead organic material is called thatch. Aerating offers your lawn a way to breathe and alleviates it from the suffocating effects thatch has on your grass, plants and other desired growth in your yard.
Your lawn also becomes compressed as it’s walked on and used heavily during times such as the summer months. Mowing, walking and playing on your lawn are all activities that contribute to compressing your lawn.
Natural weather elements such as rain, snow and wind also contribute to your lawn becoming compressed and clogged with dead organic material such as grass clippings, leaves and small sticks or twigs. This creates an environment that makes it difficult for your lawn, especially the topsoil, to absorb and utilize the nutrients it needs to grow lush and green. Aerating your lawn every 2-3 years will alleviate this built-up compression and essentially allow your lawn room to breathe and grow effectively.
Aerating your lawn is only one aspect of lawn care that helps you create a green, lush and healthy lawn that’s the envy of your friends and neighbors. Performing tasks such as dethatching coupled with aeration will give your lawn the best opportunity to grow fully and healthy by allowing it to breathe and absorb necessary nutrients without obstacles to prevent that from happening.
Core, spike and slice aeration are the three main types of lawn aeration that you’ll likely encounter when conducting your research, so it’s important to understand the differences between them.
Lawn aeration is a way of unclogging your lawn’s surface to allow for the proper flow of essential nutrients such as water, air and sunlight. Core aeration is the process of rolling over your lawn using a machine to pull out small pieces of soil from the ground, similar to coring an apple.
A core aeration machine rolls over your lawn like a lawnmower to penetrate the ground 2-3 inches deep, around your grass’s root level, and pull out small clods of soil using hollow tube-like plugs to grab the soil. These cores of soil taken from your lawn are where this type of aeration gets its name.
Core aeration is the preferred technique for most all turf management and lawn care professionals. The leftover cores taken from your lawn are left on the surface. These leftover cores serve as an organic fertilizer for your lawn as they break down and decompose. Core aeration offers many long-term benefits for your lawn as the penetrations are more permanent given the soil is removed from the ground.
Spike aeration is the process of using small spikes to perforate your lawn’s surface. Instead of core aeration that takes small plugs of soil from your lawn to create an open passageway for nutrients and water, spike aeration essentially pokes holes in your lawn’s surface to achieve the same types of results. The difference is that spike aeration machines penetrate your lawn’s surface and push the topsoil down without pulling that soil back out as in core aeration techniques.
Although spike aeration offers some of the same benefits as core aeration, it is not preferred for turf management and lawn care professionals. Where many of the benefits of core aeration are long-term, spike aeration offers immediate short-term benefits that you won’t see weeks or months after treatment. Spike aeration is known to compact the soil further, leaving your lawn with unintended results.
Slice aeration is similar to spike aeration. It involves slicing into the ground with a bladed aerator to create the perforations in the soil. Rotating blades cut into the soil, through the grass and thatch to create airways and passageways for water and nutrients to circulate into your lawn.
Slice aeration is different from spike aeration in that it does not compact your soil further. The slicing blades cut into the soil, but do not remove it from the ground like a core aerator will.
You might be wondering, “what does aerating a lawn do?” Aerating your lawn promotes the overall health of your grass and keeps your lawn looking great in general. Aerating your lawn helps your grass grow lusher and greener in a variety of ways, but it also offers benefits beyond spectacular looking grass.
When you aerate your lawn, you’re providing a passageway for essential nutrients such as sunlight and water to penetrate your lawn’s surface and promote the health of all growth and vegetation throughout your yard. Aerating your lawn regularly and at the right time of year allows the grass’s roots to grow strong by circulating the nutrients throughout your lawn.
Areas of your lawn that may be prone to more buildup of thatch or compression from being used more frequently are in dire need of nutrients. Aerating your lawn helps evenly circulate vital nutrients to those areas in need.
Your grass isn’t the only thing that’s affected by timely and proper aeration techniques. Trees, shrubs, plants and flowers are all positively impacted by aerating your lawn regularly. If you think of your lawn as a living organism in itself, then think of the grass, trees, shrubs, plants and flowers that grow there as parts of a greater whole.
Aerating your lawn is a routine maintenance task that offers many different benefits. There are many benefits and reasons for aerating your lawn beyond having the best-looking, greenest grass in the neighborhood.
Benefits of aerating your lawn include:
These are just a few of the benefits of regularly aerating your lawn. Depending on your region, you’ll want to aerate your lawn annually during certain seasons and times of the year.
The best time to aerate your lawn depends on where you live and your region’s climate. For those of you living in Maryland, fall, specifically October, is the best time to aerate your lawn. The hot, rainy summer months take a toll on your lawn and your grass’s overall health.
Couple this type of weather with the amount of time you spend in your yard during the summertime and your lawn endures a significant amount of use, wear and tear during this time. This amount of use creates a visible layer of thatch along with compacted soil that requires attention.
October is an ideal time to aerate your lawn in Maryland given it’s right before the coldest winter months and immediately after the harsh summer months that take a toll on your lawn and test the overall health of your grass. The warm summer months are when you likely cut your grass the most often. As old grass clippings and other dead organic material builds on your lawn’s surface, it prevents your lawn from being able to adequately absorb sunlight, air and water.
This buildup is essentially suffocating your lawn and robbing it of the vital nutrients it needs to grow. Likewise, the harsh winter months bring snow, ice and other frozen precipitation to Maryland and other northeastern states. These winter weather elements freeze the ground and contribute to compacting your lawn even further.
Aerating your lawn in a warm climate is done during different times of year than if you lived in a cool climate. Different types of climates are best for certain types of grasses. Your climate and types of grass dictate when the best time to aerate your lawn is going to be.
When you aerate your lawn, it is typical to follow that with overseeding. After you aerate, your lawn is in the best position for sowing new grass seed, as the process of aerating creates a favorable environment for the seeds to grow. You’ll have a better chance to germinate your new grass seed after using aeration techniques on your lawn.
For warm-season grasses, you’ll want to aerate and overseed in the spring and early summer months when the grasses are coming out of dormancy. For cool-season grasses, fall is the best time to aerate and overseed. The major types of warm- and cool-season grasses include:
When you’re aerating your lawn, you’ll want to consider your region’s climate and the type of grass you’re growing in your yard. The worst time to aerate your lawn is during the hot and dry summer months. Aerating your lawn during these times will dry out your grass and ruin your lawn’s chances to grow green and lush.
In Maryland, the best time to aerate is in the fall. This is because there is less weed competition, providing an ideal environment for new seed germination. The cool-season grasses that grow in Maryland such as Bluegrass and Fescue are best sown in the fall months, especially October.
Aerating your lawn is only one step to creating the lush, green lawn you’ve always wanted. You’ll want to combine aeration and seeding with other lawncare activities to promote healthy root growth and create a lush, green lawn you can enjoy all summer long.
Activities to consider along with aeration include:
Aerating your lawn provides a solid foundation for further lawn treatments such as the ones outlined above. Turning the soil and creating passageways for the flow of essential nutrients and water will also serve as a way for other lawncare treatments to take hold and circulate around your yard. New seed, herbicide, pesticide and fertilizer are all more effective treatments when they’re performed after aerating your lawn.
Are you interested in learning more about Maryland lawn aeration and seeding services? OrganicLawns uses core aerators to create perfect conditions for new grass seeds to germinate. Don’t tackle lawn aeration by yourself. Leave it to the professionals at OrganicLawns.
The OrganicLawns team uses blue tag certified grass seed tested by professionals to ensure your lawn is receiving the very best treatment. At OrganicLawns, we proudly serve clients located around Maryland including Baltimore County, Hartford Country, Prince George’s County and more. Don’t wait until your lawn is dead, brown and patchy before getting professional assistance.
Call us today at 410-536-5800 to get started creating the lawn of your dreams or schedule your free estimate online today.
