Lawns require tender care and love to keep looking beautiful. However, the problem is that most people take care of the lawn only on the surface. Watering and mowing, while important, are not the only things that need to be done.
Lawns that are under heavy use need to be cared for in different ways to keep them looking healthy.
Constant use takes a toll on the grass and soil and that is what you need to be looking at to keep them from dying out.
You have just moved in and have had construction done on your home with heavy machinery tracking through the lawn. Or, you have been living at your current residence for a number of years and have had children play regularly on the lawn. In both cases, you are going to face a very common problem that is not visible to the human eye, but, when you get close enough to the grass to touch, you realize the soil has started to compress.
This compression of soil is a big problem when it comes to the health and strength of the grass that will grow in your lawn in the future. Due to the compression that the soil has been going through because of the heavy use, it becomes so tightly packed that it does not let enough nutrients to penetrate the surface and reach down to the roots.
So, if you’re ever wondering why, even after so much mowing and watering, your lawn is not looking healthy and fresh, you have got your answer.
The lawn needs to breathe and the key to doing that is aeration. Aeration punctures the tightly compacted soil and makes room for it to relax. This relaxing effect makes more room for water and nutrients to pass and be absorbed by the lower part of the soil all the way to the bottom so they can reach the roots.
Now as simple as it may sound, there are ways for aeration can go wrong. More specifically you need to know what kind of aeration you are aiming for.
If you are going for spikes then be warned that it might end up compressing your lawn further and not provide you with enough room for the soil to expand and relax.
What you need to be aiming for is plugs. Plugs pull our cores of soil that make far more room than spikes and the compression that takes place during the removal pales in comparison to the room the soil has to relax eventually when the soil starts resting and expanding.
This further impacts the grass by allowing water and fertilizer (if added) to replace the old soil all the way to the bottom and gives you a stronger surface to house your grass on. Eventually that will lead to a more healthy, beautiful looking lawn and grass that will be easier to maintain in the future.