Your Full Guide to Lawn Aeration

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Author: Blair Matthews | January 5, 2022

A great way to set your lawn up for success next season is aeration. The purpose of aeration is to help the roots of your grass grow deeper to produce a stronger and healthier lawn. 

But like many other homeowners, you may have some questions, so we are going to cover topics such as:

• Aeration—Core vs Liquid Aeration
• The Benefits of Aeration
• How To Aerate Your Lawn
• FAQ About Lawn Aeration

What Is Lawn Aeration?

Aeration is the process of making small holes to break up thatch and reduce soil compassion, allowing water, oxygen, and nutrients to more easily reach the roots. This process helps the grass to establish stronger root systems, retain more water, and become less susceptible to lawn diseases and pests. When it comes to aeration, you have two options—liquid aeration and core aeration. 

Core Aeration

Core aeration, also known as mechanical aeration, uses a machine called a lawn aerator to pull out thousands of plugs of soil from your lawn and mechanically open up the soil to allow water and nutrients to penetrate deep into the root system of the turf. 

Though the holes created by the core aerator typically close up on their own and the soil plugs disintegrate before the onset of winter, this method leaves an unsightly lawn for several weeks. Additionally, this method pulls out soil cores that are only about 3 inches deep—meaning that it only addresses a small portion of the soil surface, leaving about 80 percent of the soil undisturbed.

If you are interested in this method of aeration, head to your local hardware store to pick up an aeration machine, which looks like a lawn mower (as pictured above), but instead of blades, it has spikes that penetrate the ground.

Liquid Aeration

Instead of pulling up the soil, liquid aeration uses key bio-stimulants and highly oxidizing material at specific growth stages of turf to break up and loosen the topsoil to encourage a deeper rooting and more oxygen into the topsoil. 

Liquid aeration helps break up thicker soil much more effectively and is easier to apply—sprinkler heads don’t have to be flagged, no more heavy equipment being dragged around, and we can fix the root of the problems of our native soil for a healthier lawn.

Liquid soil loosener can also be purchased at a local hardware store. To properly apply the liquid treatment, we encourage you to also purchase a hose-end sprayer.

Core vs Liquid Aeration

While core aeration has a more immediate impact on your soil and the appearance of your lawn, the effects are not very long-lasting. In turn, liquid aeration has less of an immediate impact on your turn, but the effects are longer-lasting, leading to better results over time.

While we generally recommend liquid aeration, if your turf is extremely compacted or has an excessive thatch layer (over 1/2 inch thick), we actually encourage a combination of core and liquid aeration. The holes created through core aeration allow the liquid to more thoroughly penetrate your lawn.

What Are the Benefits of Aerating Your Lawn?

The benefits of fall lawn aeration are countless, but some of the most important include the following:

Reduces Soil Compaction

Over time, the soil in your lawn is naturally compacted—through heavy foot traffic, vehicle traffic, construction activity, or by mowing your lawn too often or with a heavy mower. Compacted soil is less able to support plant growth, and can lead to problems such as waterlogging and reduced root growth. Aeration combats this by breaking up the soil and allowing more air into the soil.

Eliminating Thatch

Over time, thatch will naturally build up on your soil. Thatch is a layer of organic material that develops between your grass and your soil, composed of dead and dying shoots, stems, roots, and grass clippings—and once it starts accumulating faster than natural microorganisms can break it down, it can wreak havoc on your lawn. Aeration punches through layers of thatch, restoring your grass’ ability to breathe!

Fresh Growth

While grass can live for a long time, fresh growth is still important! Without fresh grass, large areas can die off all of a sudden, leaving big bare patches in your yard. Aeration encourages fresh growth of healthy grass in your yard, keeping it thick and healthy all season long.

Stronger Roots

Your cool-season grass will start to slow its growth in the fall, but its roots will continue to grow. By giving the grassroots easy access to fertilizer, nutrients, and water, you’re helping them grow deeper into the soil. The deeper the roots, the stronger and more resilient the grass.

Reduced Weeds

When you aerate the soil, you give the roots of your grass more breathing room. This added space encourages the roots to expand through the soil. Weeds can not grow in an area that is already full of healthy grassroots, so strong grassroots make it harder for weed seeds to take root and surprise you next spring!

Weathering Winter

Oftentimes, lawns that are withered and exhausted in the fall don’t survive the cold temperatures, making it expensive come spring to fix all the brown patches. What’s more, once the brown patches are handled, it may take weeks for new grass to take root and grow. This means that you may need to invest in a few weeks of corrective action to nurse your backyard back to health! Aerating in the fall will rejuvenate your lawn, making it better equipped to handle our freezing winters and setting it up for success once spring arrives!