Don’t Get Sold On Power Raking

There are many homeowners – and lawn care providers, as well – who believe that power raking should be a part of every Spring clean-up. My experience has been that power raking is rarely necessary for most lawns. For example, advocates of power raking usually claim that it will solve the problem of excess thatch. Although it may indeed remove thatch, usually it will also remove perfectly healthy grass plants or slice-and-dice them so that they will soon die. After a lawn has been power raked there is a considerable amount of exposed soil throughout the “lawn”. It may take weeks – sometimes months – for a lawn to recover from this treatment. Also, while it is recovering there is a very good chance that both broadleaf weeds and crabgrass will sprout and take hold in those bare areas.

The fact of the matter is, a half an inch or so of thatch is actually beneficial to your lawn. If, however, your lawn feels spongy as you walk across it, you may indeed have an excess of thatch. A much better solution than power raking is core aeration. A core aeration machine punches holes into the surface of the soil then pulls out and deposits small plugs of soil all across the lawn. These cores should not be raked up or disturbed. They should be allowed to remain on the surface of the lawn until they have been rained on or watered a couple of times. When the soil in these cores becomes wet, it will run down to the thatch layer and introduce microbes into that layer. The net effect of this process is that the thatch layer is now being composted by having soil both above and below. This is a very natural process and it does not tear up your lawn. Any remaining debris from the coring plugs can then be raked up, mowed up or just left to decompose.

An important consideration here is that the core aeration process does much more than naturally reduce the thatch layer. If the soil your lawn is trying to grow in has been compacted due to heavy foot or vehicle traffic, then core aeration is probably the best method to correct this situation. Also, after core aeration more water can find its way into the lawn’s root system as opposed to running off the hard surface. Yet another benefit is that it allows more oxygen and fertilizer to find it’s way into your lawn root zone.

So the bottom line here is that if your lawn needs to be treated for excess thatch or if the soil your grass is growing in is compacted, you’ll get much better results by using the core aeration technique than by power raking.

NEXT TIME: The Benefits of Mulch Mowing