Aerating In Northern Virginia

Aeration is one of the most essential parts of maintaining a healthy and weed free yard in Northern Virginia. A healthy lawn requires three elements for sustained growth -- moisture (water), nutrients, and air. Aerating your lawn can help in all of these areas! Soils that are heavy in clay (like the lawns in Northern Virginia) are more prone to compacting, which reduces the amount of air that grass roots need to survive. With aerating, the soil is loosened, thereby reducing the effects of compaction on your lawn. Aeration also allows water and nutrients to better penetrate the soil and get down to those grass roots.

What Is Aerating?

Aeration is the process of punching holes into a lawn to allow water, oxygen, fertilizers, and other nutrients to penetrate the soil and better reach the roots of your grass. Aerating is usually done by pushing hollow cylinders into the ground and forcing out plugs of soil to the lawn surface with a core aerator. Some companies offer to remove these plugs from your lawn after aerating -- this is a very bad idea as these plugs will dissolve into the lawn and provide the much needed nutrients to the soil below. Think of the aeration plugs as free fertilizer!

Aeration Benefits

As we've already seen, aeration is a key component to any landscaping plan. According to the Virginia Cooperative Extension, some of the benefits of aerating in Northern Virginia are:

• Aerating Helps To Break Up And Control Thatch
• Aeration Is Important In Increasing The Activity Of Soil Microorganisms Needed To Decompose Thatch
• The Holes Left From Aerating Allow Oxygen To Get To Grass Roots
• Aerating Loosens Heavy Clay Soils Which Allows For Root Growth
• Core Aeration Helps With Overseeding By Allowing Seed To Soil Contact
• Cores Left From Aerating Provide Nutrients To The Existing Lawn
• Aeration Enhances The Infiltration Of Rainfall
• Aerating Helps With Proper Irrigation Of Lawns

Do I Need To Aerate?

In Northern Virginia, it is always recommended to aerate your yard on a yearly basis, sometimes twice! The best time to aerate cool season lawns of tall fescue and Kentucky bluegrass is in late August to mid September -- this is when these lawns are coming out of summer dormancy and beginning a period of vigorous growth. This time of year also has less competition from weeds, allowing for optimal seeding conditions. Warm season grasses like bermudagrass and zoysiagrass are best aerated during June and July, as this is the time they experience the most growth. This isn't to say you can't aerate at other points of the year -- these are just the best times of year to do it.

Aerating - The Hall's Landscaping Approach

At Hall's Landscaping, we believe core aeration is a highly effective and inexpensive way to help keep your lawn thriving. Aerating with Hall's Landscaping also includes overseeding, fertilizing, and lime applications to insure that your lawn gets the treatment that it needs.

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