Fall is actually a pretty busy season in terms of lawn care. Issue number one of course is all of the leaves. They’re colorful beauties for a while, but once they’re piled up on the lawn, not so much fun. Luckily, mulching leaves with your lawn mower is a pretty effective way to get rid of the mess quickly.
After that task has been dealt with, it’s time to consider what you’re going to do now to lay the foundation for next year’s fantastic lawn. We all know that preparation is more than half of achieving victory. Paying attention to what your grass needs to thrive now is the best way to ensure you start the growing season strong, with fresh, vibrant grass growth.
Let’s talk specifics about two necessary lawn care tasks: soil aeration and seeding.
Soil aeration first. Your soil might be too tightly packed to allow for effective grass growth. It’s a thing that happens to a lot of homeowners – maybe there’s been too much vehicle traffic in your yard, maybe there’s a lot of activity like kids running around, maybe you just have the bad luck to have naturally dense soil in your location. This is a pretty rare case where the why doesn’t matter to determine the solution to the problem: what you need is soil aeration.
Soil aeration involves using a cool machine to introduce thousands of tiny holes into the surface of your lawn to loosen it up. These holes allow vital oxygen, rainwater, and any fertilizer you’re putting out there to penetrate below the surface and reach the roots of your grass. You want to aerate the lawn before you do any of your other fall lawn care tasks. This will allow you to get the maximum amount of benefit from your work.
Do you want to buy a lawn aeration machine yourself? Probably not. They’re quite expensive for a task that needs to be done at most once or twice a year. Eliminate a lot of hassle by having your local lawn service aerate the lawn for you. And while you have them on site, it’s the ideal time to have the lawn seeded. Planting more grass now will result in a healthier, lusher lawn next year.
