How do I aerate my lawn?

Many homeowners struggle with thin-looking lawns and search for ways to thicken up their turf. Hard compact soil is typically a “root cause” for thin-looking lawns and “lawn aeration”, “core aeration” or “aerification” is a great place to start for a lot of reasons.

Here is a summary of related topics covered in our aeration guide:

What is core aeration?

Core aeration is a mechanical process performed with a machine called a “core aerator.” This machine is taken across the lawn and in the process, it removes cores of soil that are about the size of your thumb.

How often and when is the best time to core aerate?
If your lawn soil is highly compacted as clay soil across much of the US is, you can aerate every single year and the best time to core aerate your lawn is fall. The logic behind that is lawns put in roots in the fall time and core aeration helps that.

What is liquid aeration?

In recent years, a different process is known as “liquid aeration” has become popular. Liquid aeration isn’t a complete substitute for traditional mechanical core aeration, but does offer a viable alternative for folks who are not able to mechanically aerate their yards. These “liquid aeration” products break bonds in the soil chemically. Every bond that is broken creates more space (aka greater soil surface area) where grassroots can then spread and grow. 

- We recommend Air-8 as a liquid aeration option. 

Core Aeration vs. Liquid Aeration

Many folks will ask if they should still mechanically aerate their lawns if they are using liquid aeration. The truth is, you can have a VERY healthy lawn without either one. On the flip side, you can have healthier soil with both, faster.

The real key to all of this is to get more organic materials and carbon introduced into your soil so that it supports healthy turf growth to a greater degree.

Mechanical aeration alone will not add any organic material or carbon to the soil. You can use products such as Soil Mastery after aeration to get them directly into the soil to improve it over time.

Liquid aeration, Air-8, can also help get carbon into your soil as it has it in the mix already in small amounts. Improving your soil with liquid aeration isn’t a stand-alone prospect though - it’s recommended you apply humic acid throughout the year along with and in addition to the Air-8 to help this process. We also recommend you use fertilizers that contain natural or organic nutrients which also increase soil carbon over time. Milorganite is a great example here.

At the end of the day, here is what we recommend:

If you have a cool-season lawn, you should plan to mechanically aerate in the fall. Do it just for the experience, but also for the benefit. After you aerate, cover the lawn with compost or peat moss to get it introduced deeper and start to change your soil’s composition. If you are a real savage, spray down RGS and Air-8 right after your mechanical aeration and also overseed and apply starter fertilizer. Then water like crazy to really thicken that lawn up!

If you are someone who is straight-up “I’m not going to all that trouble” then we recommend the next best thing which is to get the Compaction Cure Combo and spray that down twice in the fall time, water it in! This is the next best way to move ahead to healthier soil without going through all the hassle of taking a beating from the mechanical aerator.

For more information, here is a link to our FREE Aeration Guide: https://yardmastery.com/pages/the-lawn-aeration-guide

Keywords: aeration, aerate, core aeration, liquid aeration, AIR8, AIR-8, mechanical aeration, compact, compaction, clay, hard soil