By learning why, when and how to dethatch, you can keep your thick, lush grass on track. These lawn dethatching basics can help understand:. If your thatch is over 2 inches thick, you may want to consider hiring a professional for the job. Excessive thatch can take more than one removal session, and removing too much at once can damage grass roots. Your local county extension agent can help you decide which route to take. If DIY is more your style , you can dethatch your lawn in three ways:.
Most lawn and garden stores carry manual dethatching rakes. Equipment rental stores often keep power rakes and vertical mowers on hand, especial during dethatching season.
Whatever option you choose, finish the job by raking up all the thatch debris and watering your dethatched lawn thoroughly.
Seeding your lawn is an economical and satisfying way to introduce healthy turf to your yard. Water conservation and a healthy, beautiful lawn aren't mutually exclusive. You can do your part to manage water usage, and keep your lawn. When you're on a quest for the perfect lawn, you're bound to encounter challenges. These lawn dethatching basics can help understand: What is Thatch?
If you've ever seen a cross-section of soil and grass roots, you've seen the layer of organic debris known as thatch. A mix of dead and living plant material, thatch forms at the base of grass plants, where stems meet roots and soil.
Some organic matter, such as small grass clippings or mulched leaves, break down quickly in healthy lawns, but other materials take much longer to decompose. When buildup outpaces breakdown, your lawn's thatch layer grows thicker.
A thin thatch layer allows water, nutrients and air to penetrate into soil and reach waiting plant roots. But when thatch grows thick, grass suffers. Thatch layers of 1 inch or more become barriers instead of benefits. Thick thatch blocks water and fertilizer, and grass roots get trapped in thatch, where they're vulnerable to heat, drought and stress. Dethatching step-by-step Once you've determined that your lawn is in need of dethatching, here are a few tips to give you an idea of what is involved.
Don't fertilize the lawn for at least 45 days prior to dethatching. Mow the lawn to the lowest recommended height for your particular grass. Bag the clippings. A lot of debris will be generated. Remove this debris. Water the lawn. This helps prevent excessive drying and helps the grass recover faster. Stars indicate the best time to dethatch a lawn based on type of grass.
The two types of grasses have different growth patterns. Lawns should be dethatched only when conditions favor rapid recovery. T hat means three or four weeks of good growing weather after the dethatching. Dethatch with moist soil but not wet.
The Virginia Extension recommends watering thoroughly two days before you plan to bring out the big guns. Run the dethatching machine over your yard at least three times, Callahan said, in different directions each time. The machine should churn up roughly the same volume of material each pass, he said.
Then collect and remove all the thatch. Dethatching machines come in various forms. And although some lawn services and rental companies use the terms interchangeably, the machines perform dethatching by different means, with varying levels of intensity. Here are some of the most common dethatching techniques, and the power dethatchers that perform them. What they have in common are spinning metal pieces that pierce and lift the thatch from the lawn.
Some employ slicers, others metal tines experts recommend the former as more effective. Some are stand-alone, powered units, others are made to be dragged behind a tractor or riding mower. Power rakes attack serious thatch. Using them carries some risk to the lawn since they can pull up live plants along with dead grass. They come with adjustable flail blades that allow deep penetration into the lawn.
These are all-in-one machines owned by some professional lawn care companies. They have one set of spinning blades that dethatch, then another set of circular blades that lay down grooves. They dethatch and plant grass seed in a single pass. In any case, passing over the lawn with any of the above dethatching machine will lift a large volume of thatch — even on small lawns, it can produce enough to fill several lawn bags — that needs to be gathered up with a rake or mower with the mulching unit attached.
Reserve these machines for the most-serious thatch problems — 1 inch or more. They have thick blades that cut through to the soil surface and allow you to remove sod in strips.
You need to completely renovate the lawn if using a sod cutter. Aeration is also an option for lawns with a mild amount of thatch. A core aerator will pull up plugs of sod, which can provide space for nutrients to penetrate beneath the thatch layer.
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