“Our home was the third-to-last one to be built in this part of the development,” Janet, a Massachusetts homeowner explained. “When we moved in, it was so new that you could still see the tire tracks from all kinds of heavy equipment in the lawn. Now we’ve been here a little over a year, and the grass just isn’t growing. Maybe our soil is too hard to grow grass? I don’t know what can be done to make my yard look better.”
Understanding What Grass Needs to Grow
As a Massachusetts lawn service, this is an issue we run into a lot. While there are a lot of older homes in our area, there’s also a lot of new construction. As Janet mentioned, during the construction process, it’s not unusual for heavy equipment, trucks, and crews of workers to move around on the lawn. This can cause the soil to pack down, becoming heavily compacted. The soil can become quite hard, as hard as concrete.
When soil is heavily compacted in this way, it becomes difficult for grass seed to grow. This is because seeds grow best when they’re beneath the surface of the soil. If the seeds can’t get below ground, neither can rain water, nutrition, or oxygen – all of which are vital to grass growth.
The remedy to heavily compacted soil is called aeration. Aeration is a service provided by your local lawn service, in which a piece of machinery is used to loosen up the soil in your lawn. This is done by creating thousands of tiny (pencil eraser sized) holes in your lawn. These holes help break down the concrete-like soil into an environment where grass seed can sprout and subsequently thrive.
Find aeration and seeding experts in Massachusetts
In your message, you didn’t say anything about how you seeded your lawn. Sometimes people don’t know that grass is a crop that needs to be planted – it doesn’t just happen on its own. For best results, after you’ve had the lawn aerated, have your local lawn service power seed the lawn. This process physically introduces the seed beneath the surface of your formally-rock-hard lawn, which gives it the best chance for healthy growth.
