Aeration Essential for Kansas City Lawns

Look out your window. Do you see the millions of gasping, choking organisms yelling for help? You didn’t do it on purpose, but slowly you have contributed to the painful suffocation of your prized Kansas City lawn. The incriminating activities have seemed innocent enough; children playing on the lawn, weekly mowing, and diligent fertilization. However, the traffic of people and mowers has compacted the soil and eliminated all of the small spaces found throughout healthy soil. Without these spaces, oxygen has not been able to penetrate into the root system of the grass. Additionally, the use of chemical fertilizers has dramatically reduced the amount of living microorganisms naturally oxygenating the soil. To verify that your lawn suffers from compaction problems, take the largest flat tipped screwdriver you have and push it into the ground. If it does not go down at least 3” with ease, then your lawn is in serious trouble. Luckily, you don’t have to continue to watch your lawn suffer. You can give it CPR and revive it with core aeration.

To core aerate your lawn, you will need to use a machine called an aerator. This is a large heavy machine that is designed to plunge hollow steel tubes into the soil. As the tubes are driven into the lawn, cores of soil are removed from the ground and strewn across the lawn. The tines are usually around ¾” wide and penetrate up to 3 inches, depending on the specific design of the machine being used. Your lawn will receive maximum benefit from aerators that can pull a full 3” long core from the soil. This allows oxygen, water and nutrients to reach your lawns entire root zone.

You have two basic options when choosing to aerate your lawn in Kansas City. You can rent an aerator from a tool rental store or hire a professional. Renting an aerator will be slightly cheaper than hiring a professional and you will have the satisfaction and pride of doing very hard manual labor in your yard. However, doing it yourself will likely take an entire day by the time you rent the machine, aerate your lawn, clean the machine and return it. Additionally, aeration requires enough physical strength to muscle a 300-pound machine around and if you are not experienced when making turns you can do a lot of damage to your lawn. It will cost you more to hire a professional to aerate your lawn, but you will not have to give up a precious day of your weekend and you can feel comfortable that it is being done by an experienced and knowledgeable individual. The aerators used by some professionals can do a better job in harder soils than machines from rental yards and may pull deeper cores. Better machines in the hands of more experienced operators will mean a better overall aeration for your lawn.

The benefits that you will see from aerating your yard will not be seen immediately, but they will last for a long time. The cores that have been strewn across your yard will decompose in 10 – 15 days and will fill in the new holes with fresh, loose soil. Grass roots will quickly migrate to these areas and enjoy the feast of new water and nutrients. The essential microorganisms will begin to multiply and begin rebuilding the soil and your lawn will be healthier, more drought resistant and more likely to flourish in Kansas City’s difficult soils.

I recommend to my customers that they have their lawn aerated each year. You can have it done in the fall or the spring. The exact timing depends on the type of grass you have. If you have cool season grasses (fescue and bluegrass) then March, April and September are your ideal dates. If you have warm season grasses (Zoysia and Bermuda) then May and June are your best months for aeration. The key is to aerate at the peak times of growth for your lawn. This guarantees the quickest recovery and the most benefit from your grass.