Some things just go great together.
Peanut butter and jelly. Jeans and T-shirts. Saturday morning and sleeping in.
One more classic pairing: lawn aeration and top dressing.
These two go-together lawn tasks deliver a healthy one-two punch for your grass, reviving compacted, struggling lawns.
Does your lawn need it?
Grab a PB&J and let’s take a look.
First Up: Give It Some Air
Maybe it seems like you’re doing all the right stuff for your lawn, but it still doesn’t look great. It might be struggling to breathe.
Over time, soil gets compacted. Kids and pets trample it, or it just happens with age, over time.
When your soil becomes compacted, your lawn can't breathe. Its roots can't take in the water and nutrients it needs to thrive.
If your lawn needs aeration and you don't do it, water won't penetrate deeply. So your lawn’s roots will shrink and come to the surface, looking for water.
Your struggling lawn gets weak. That makes it easier for weeds and disease to move in. Grass that used to be green turns brown. Pests pounce.
It’s a bad scene.
How to Help? Lawn Aeration
Lawn aeration uses a cool machine to pull out tiny cores of soil from your lawn, allowing water and oxygen to get to the roots again.
Aerating sod also helps break down thatch, a layer of dead grass that sits between the grass blades and the soil. When it gets too thick, thatch blocks air, water, and fertilizer from reaching your lawn’s roots.
Lawn aeration is a great once-a-year task to keep those turf roots breathing. It should be done when the grass is actively growing, ideally in spring or fall.
Then the grass can easily heal and fill in any open areas after the soil plugs are removed. Speaking of those soil plugs, just leave them alone to decompose — they'll add valuable nutrients to your lawn.
Next Up: Feed Your Lawn!
After lawn aeration, you have a bunch of little holes in your lawn, helping your grass breathe.
Take advantage of the situation with sod topdressing.
Topdressing is food for your soil, a nutrient-rich layer of soil blended with compost and other organics.
All those little holes from lawn aeration help the topdressing materials nestle nicely down into the soil.
As the material settles, the nutrients release into the soil and do their thing — creating a strong foundation for a healthy and lush lawn.
Here at Ground Source, we use Comand Soil in our topdressing, a specialty compost that helps restore the soil ecosystem by providing all-important organic matter and beneficial microbes crucial to soil health.
The result? Healthier soil; deeper, stronger roots and a greener, thicker lawn.
Sure, you fertilize your lawn, and that’s super important. But topdressing feeds your soil, and improving soil health is a long term approach to a healthy lawn.
Benefits of Sod Topdressing: Where to Start?
Beyond feeding your soil a nourishing, all-natural meal, topdressing does other great stuff, too:
Bumpy, uneven lawn? That’s annoying. A nice layer of sod topdressing evens it out, creating a level surface.
Soil here in Central Florida is often sandy, which means water and nutrients drain through quickly. Topdressing sod adds some oomph to your soil, helping it retain the good stuff.
Sod topdressing is chemical free, posing no risk to the environment.
New home? Your Orlando lawn was likely installed on builder’s sand, which contains few nutrients. Topdressing sod bolsters that barren soil.
So, How to Nab an Aerator?
You can rent an aerator from lawn and garden stores or home improvement centers. But know what you’re getting into.
These machine beasts weigh 300 lbs. You don’t just toss it in the trunk. You’ll need a trailer to transport it.
And wrestling one across your lawn all day will really beat you up, especially if you’re not used to doing outside work.
Most of the walk-behind aerators you can rent rely solely on weight to pierce the soil.
But professionals use more powerful stand-on aerators that use hydraulic pressure to drive the tines into the ground and pull out deep cores of soil.
What if you accidentally hit a sprinkler head, or landscape lighting wiring? Add that to your aerator rental cost. Plus the hassle of getting it repaired.
Aeration and topdressing is best left to landscaping pros. Then, just like your newly aerated lawn, you can breathe easy, too.
Ready for Lawn Aeration and Topdressing? Trust Ground Source
Lawn not looking so great? Now you know how to help it thrive again.
Need lawn aeration in Central Florida? We’re on it.
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