Restoring your lawn after a cold, snowy winter can be a challenging task. From clean-up to planting to maintenance, proper lawn care in the spring consists of a long list of responsibilities.
To give your lawn the care and treatment it deserves after a freezing Maine winter, dethatching and aerating are two of the best things you can do. Depending on the situation, your lawn may only need either aeration or dethatching. In some cases, your lawn might need both.
Dethatching and Aeration
Both dethatching and aeration are treatments that improve the flow of nutrients to the roots of your lawn. However, they do so by fixing different issues with your lawn.
Dethatching is a process that removes excess thatch – the tangled, matted areas – from your lawn so that nutrients, air, and water can reach the soil. In other words, dethatching is a powerful, deep lawn raking.
Aeration is an efficient method of breaking and treating the soil so that the lawn and the soil under it can breathe. The lawn patches that have constant foot traffic require lawn aeration more frequently than more out-of-the-way areas do.
Although both treatments are used for different issues, the results achieved are quite similar.
When to aerate and dethatch?
There are several ways you can determine if your lawn needs to be dethatched, aerated or both.
Lawn dethatching should be done if your lawn has grown over 1.5 inches tall. It is also helpful for addressing the following conditions:
- Invading weeds
- Spongy ground
- Lawn that is springy to the touch
- Thinning grass
- Dry spots
- Fading color
- Insects and fungal diseases
Lawn aeration is helpful for addressing the following conditions:
- Hard soil
- Thinning grass
- Brown patches
- Improper drains
- Invading weeds
- Yellow grass, slow growth
- Stressed shrubs
If you are both dethatching and aerating your lawn, we recommend that you dethatch first to remove debris, dead grass and other organic matter. Once your lawn has been dethatched it makes aeration much easier.
Get in touch with us
If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact us at (207) 712-5554. Our team of experts at AC Yard Services are here to guide you and help take care of your lawn dethatching and aeration needs.
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