HOW TO AERATE YOUR LAWN

There are a few different ways to aerate your lawn and a few different tools which you can use to do it - check out the different tools here. 

Do It On A Damp Lawn

When you are looking to aerate your lawn, make sure the lawn is damp. You only want the lawn to be damp though, so avoid it if the soil is overly wet or waterlogged. 

You can either wait for the rain or once you have watered your lawn, give it an hour or so and then aerate. If you try to aerate when it is dry, you may not achieve the full depth of aeration and not be as successful, plus you will find it is really difficult. 

Equipment

How you aerate will depend mostly on the equipment that you use to aerate. All of the different tools are simple to use and just require you to pass the tool over the lawn. 

You get 3 categories of aerators:

• Spiking aerators 
• Slicing aerators 
• Plug/hollow tine aerators
  

The difference between these are the ways in which they create some sort of hole within the lawn. The spiking aerator punches small holes into the lawn, the slicing aerator cuts a slit into the lawn and the plug/hollow tine cuts small plugs out of the lawn. 

Coverage

When aerating, you want to ensure full coverage and aerate evenly across the whole lawn. To do this, try the following:

• Aerate in 2 directions - up and down your lawn, as well as side to side
• When moving in a direction, be sure to slightly overlap each stripe that you aerate
• Make sure you aerate to the full depth of the tool and insert the tool fully

However, concentrate on areas which have higher traffic and aerate these more heavily. If you miss parts of the lawn, you will start to get a patchy lawn, so make sure it is all covered. 

If you have a small lawn you will find it simple to do this, but if not, you may want to find a way to systematically do this. If you have a rolling aerator, this should be pretty simple in that you just roll up and down creating stripes as you go. Alternatively, you may want to segment your lawn into small sections to help you. You could use various items to do this such as rope, string, bamboo canes, wood, etc. 

Finally, once you have aerated your lawn, you may want to look at fertilising or overseeding your lawn. As the soil has been opened up during the aeration, it is a great time to sow new seed or fertilise.