it plenty of nutrient for the spring
green up you can actually put your
spring fertilizer down
later if you do that so there are a lot
of benefits to core aeration it’s a
great thing to do most lawn care
companies and landscape companies will
aerate as a service you can certainly
rent a machine yourself and do it it’s
not too difficult get a little bit of
exercise if you’d like more tips like
this please subscribe to our camp for
your garden i’m tom wood ok thanks for
watching and be sure to come down to the
dispatch home and garden show and
holiday fest from sep tember 11 through
the 13th at the Ohio Expo Center where
you can get expert advice on everything
from your roof to your garden and be
sure to bring your garden question
September 11 at 11am I’ll be moderating
an all-star garden guru panel where
we’ll get those questions answered
hi I’m Tom Wood garden expert and this
video is brought to you by the dispatch
home and garden show and holiday fast
one of the questions I get all the time
is when is the best time to aerate my
lawn well I tell people spring and fall
but most of the time people only do it
once and if you’re going to do it once
you want to do it in the fall you get
the most root growth occurring in the
fall and that root growth will occur
even when the top of the grass isn’t
growing now what’s happening when we’re
doing aeration well we’ve got a
narrating machine that has these small
teens that are on a disk and as we’re
driving through the lawn those are
pulling a plug out of the grass and I’ll
show you a little tight example of that
here we’ve got an example of those plugs
and I’ve just used a soil probe to do
that the aerators doing the exact same
thing we have a heavy clay soil in
central Ohio what we’re doing is we’re
pulling that heavy clay soil up and as
that soul breaks down into the thatch
layer which tends to build up over the
season the microorganisms in the soil
help break down that thatch which then
make it more of a useful nutrient for
the grass that’s one benefit the other
benefit is we’re reducing compaction and
that’s a big one just the foot traffic
on your yard when you mow all season
long and especially when it’s wet will
cause compaction and that makes it
harder for the roots to grow so by
pulling that plug out we loosen that up
the soil around that loosens up and it
gives a better loooser soil for those
roots to penetrate and become deeper and
again you’re blending the clay with the
organic material on top the third thing
that it’s a benefit for is it allows
water and nutrients to get down into the
root zone where we want it I always
recommend that you put a winter
fertilizer down after the grass is
basically gone dormant you don’t want it
to continue growing into the winter but
after it’s gone dormant get a final
winterize or fertilizer down that will
help it green up in the spring
