Lawn Aeration

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What is Lawn Aeration?

Lawn aeration is the practice of making oxygen available to soil under the surface of the lawn. This can be done with manual tools or with powered machines. It can also be accomplished organically with the help of microbes and worms. This article will focus on explaining the need for aeration as well as the benefits associated with the practice of mechanical aeration.

Why Should You Aerate Your Lawn?

Turf grasses need oxygen, light, and water. They also need nutrition from the soil. Decomposition is the natural process that converts dead plant and animal matter into bio-available plant food. This vital transformation is an aerobic process achieved by hard working living organisms that require oxygen and moisture to survive and thrive. If the soil under your lawn becomes hard it might be a sign that your microbes and earthworms have gone on strike for better working conditions. Or worse yet, they may all be sick or dead. When this occurs, the natural process of decomposition can slow down or stop.

Over time, a slowdown in decomposition will produce a visible result. Dead leaves and grass clippings which would normally decompose and become plant food start to pile up. The layer of dead matter is known as thatch. A little thatch is normal and natural. It is like a food pantry for your microbial community. However, a thatch layer with a thickness greater than one inch can be the visible symptom of an invisible soil problem.

Dethatching is the practice of manually removing thatch with a thatch rake or a power rake. If your thatch layer is too thick, then dethatching can be a helpful preventive measure for your grass as it removes the breeding ground for a number of common lawn diseases. However, dethatching often fails to address the underlying problem. The excess thatch would not be there in the first place if your soil was teaming with good microbes and worms in balance with the right mix of oxygen and moisture. Addressing the source of the problem can help you to avoid more thatch problems in the future.

Common causes for excess thatch include over-watering, over-fertilizing, and the application of life-destroying chemicals. Aerobic organisms in your soil do their best work in a moist chemical-free environment with lots of oxygen. Imagine a moist sponge after you squeeze out the excess water. Composting experts agree that the “damp sponge feeling” is the right moisture level for rapid decomposition in a compost pile. However, too much water will slow decomposition to a crawl. Likewise, watering a lawn too much or too often will slowdown or stop the process of converting thatch into plant food. A wet thatch layer without active ongoing decomposition can become a breeding ground for fungal disease. The best watering strategy for lawn and soil health is to water deeply once a week. This allows for rapid aerobic decomposition to continue near the surface most of the week, and it encourages deep root growth at the same time.

Benefits of Using a Power Aerator

Aeration with a power aerator can quickly restore much needed oxygen to compacted soil. The aerator drives a row of hollow tubes into the ground vertically. As the tubes are pulled up each tube lifts a core of grass, thatch and dirt up with it. The machine then deposits the cores on top of the lawn. The resulting holes in the ground allow air to permeate the compacted soil. This in turn revives the previously suffocated microbial community and they get right up to resume their work of converting dead stuff into plant food. The good process of decomposition will gradually accelerate back to its normal pace.

When excess thatch is minimal, power aeration can eliminate the need to dethatch. The aerator cuts through much of the thatch problem during the coring process, and the oxygen invigorated microbes pick up where the aerator left off.

Fire Ants

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How to Get Rid of Fire Ants Without Using Pesticides

I have a self serving respect for fire ants. Their stings are painful, then itchy, and they usually take 2 or 3 weeks to completely heal. I also don’t like the way their mounds pop up in my lawn after it rains. I can easily hose the mounds back down but the overall nuisance factor of a bunch of fire ant colonies is pretty high.

For several years I used pesticides to get rid of them. I thought the pesticides were selective and killed only the fire ants. I was wrong.

The active ingredient in the commercial fire ant killer turned out to be the same ingredient used in the general pesticide that I sometimes applied. The chemical is called bifenthrin and it kills over a 100 varieties of insects. That realization made me heartsick.

In my effort to get rid of fire ants I had also killed or injured many of the good “critters” that were helping to maintain the health of my soil.

Healthy soil has millions of micro-organisms living in balance with plants, worms and insects. With proper organic farming techniques, the right mix of the good guys can keep the bad guys under control.  [More about that here]

But what about the fire ants? How can you get rid of fire ants without damaging the health of your soil?

20 Mule Team Borax Recipe

One highly selective solution is to mix a quart of light corn syrup with 5 tablespoons of 20 Mule Team Borax. I mix the ingredients in a large mixing bowl with a Stainless Steel Balloon Whisk. Then I use a funnel to pour the mixture back into the corn syrup bottle. The bottle serves as a convenient dispenser for placing small globs of Borax-laced syrup near ant hills. Foraging fire ants will take some of it down into the colony and share it with the others as food. If they feed it to the queen it will kill her, and the entire colony will die. Ant activity around the mound will cease within 24 to 48 hours.

Nematodes

Another approach is fully organic. It involves sending nematodes down into the ant colonies to kill off the ants. Nematodes are very small worms. There is an incredibly large variety of nematode species. One variety known as sting nematodes can hurt your lawn but other nematodes are beneficial and can be used to get rid of unwanted pests. If the idea of using nematodes to combat fire ants catches your interest, you can check it out further Gulf Coast Biotics.

Restoring Damaged Soil

The soil under my lawn was sick from using pesticides for several years in a row. My primary symptoms were soil compaction and excess thatch. The compacted soil under my lawn indicated there were not enough micro-organisms and earthworms working together to keep it moist and aerated. Excessive thatch buildup was telling me I didn’t have enough microbes and good bacteria in my soil to naturally convert clippings and leaves into nutritious compost.

The Power Tool Option

I did some checking about renting a power aerator and decided against it. The machine plunges hollow tubes vertically into the soil. The tubes cut and pull plugs out of the lawn. The cutting process could damage many of the stolons in my centipedegrass. A power dethatcher would be even more destructive to my particular kind of turf. As it rakes out the thatch it would also break or rip up many stolons. One of the characteristics of centipedegrass is that most of the stolons or runners are on top of the soil.

Alternative Treatments for Compaction and Excess Thatch

Thankfully, several organic solutions are available to aerate and add life to the soil. For considerably less than the price of an aerator rental, you can get the desired result with a quart of Natural Liquid Soil Loosener. Spray it on as directed and water it in.

For my thatch problem I used a 4-step plan:

  1. Over the course of several weeks, I decreased the mowing height of my mulching mower down to the lowest height available. The process chopped up most of my thatch layer into small pieces which the mower then deposited on top of the shortened turf. Centipedegrass actually prefers lower mowing heights, even as low as just one inch.
  2. I left the layer of mulched thatch and grass clippings out in the sun to dry for several days.
  3. I ran my mulching mower back over the dry mulch layer to chop it up further.
  4. The final step was to add an organic dethatching solution chocked full of microbes and bacteria to replace the ones I killed with man-made chemicals. You can do the same with a gallon of Natural Liquid Dethatcher Blend.

If you are a patient person, you can skip the first 3 steps of my 4 step approach and simply apply the liquid dethatcher as directed on the bottle. Then water and wait as millions of microbes go to work for you.

Next year, when the fire ants come back, please remember to skip the pesticide. Try a little borax in corn syrup, or order some nematodes instead.

Tinnitus

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Tinnitus — That Constant Ringing In Your Ears

This morning as the house grew quiet around me, I noticed a pronounced ringing in my ears. For me this was nothing new. I have been dealing with a constant high-pitched background tone for more than a decade. Most of the time I can focus past it and it fades out of my conscious awareness. This morning was different. It was louder.

I knew the medical name for my condition, so I Googled “tinnitus” and noticed a recently updated article by Dr. John Cunha. The part that got my attention was his third paragraph on the causes of tinnitus, where he said, “Today, loud noise exposure is a very common cause of tinnitus, and it often damages hearing as well.”

Loud Noise Exposure

Yowzuh!! Guess what I was doing for a good part of the day yesterday! I was operating lawn tools with loud gasoline engines. The muffler on my lawn mower is not what it used to be, and I was running it at high speed to avoid stalling out as I moved slowly through thick turf. My weed eater is also quite loud at high speeds, and in some situations I need to hold the engine close to my head in order to properly control the cutting line while trimming and edging my lawn. Finally, my 200 mph gas-powered leaf blower may be the loudest of the three at higher frequencies.

Hearing Protection

Prior to today, I was not concerned about the noise level of my lawn tools but the tinnitus this morning was a wake up call. I don’t want to make the ringing worse than it already is, and I certainly don’t want to give myself further hearing damage. My immediate short-term solution will be to wear a pair of foam earplugs while operating loud equipment. They are quick, cheap and effective. You can buy them at your local drug store.

– Several Weeks Go By –

A Better Solution

Noise-Blocking Stereo Earmuffs

The Howard Leight Sync combines industrial strength hearing protection with stereo headphones at an affordable price. I plug mine into an iPod nano so that I can listen to podcasts as I mow the lawn. The sound is clear and intelligible. For me, this is huge.

Not Every Weed is a Weed

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Part of my lawn was not doing very well. A section next to my driveway was compacted by foot traffic. As the turf grass began to thin out, various weeds took its place. Most of the weeds were fairly common and not difficult to pull out by hand. However, one weed was giving me fits. It grew rapidly and ran long tough runners under the surface of the soil. This was impressive considering how compacted the area was from foot traffic. Above the surface it had tiny sharp leaves and it quickly went to seed. I tried pulling it out by hand but the long underground runners broke before I could get to the primary roots. I looked up the Texas A&M turf grass site which has a great reference section on weeds. I studied every weed on the site but could not match my problem weed to any of them.

Finally, in desperation, I pulled up several samples of the weed and went to my local nursery to get help. The two people on duty that day could not help me. They had a weed catalog and we went through it together but we could not find a weed that matched my sample. They asked if I could come back the next day to talk to their “garden guru.”

Early the following morning, I made my way back to the nursery. The “garden guru” turned out to be a pleasant older lady with many years of gardening and yard care experience. I told her I had a quick growing weed that was threatening to take over my centipedegrass lawn. Then I pulled a sample out of my brown paper bag and she immediately instructed me that my “weed” was in fact bermudagrass. Unfortunately, she did not know of any herbicide that would kill the bermudagrass without also killing my centipedegrass. Her only suggestion was that I do the best I could to pull the bermudagrass out by hand and then “mow the heck out of the centipedegrass” to get it to crowd out the bermuda. This I was eager to do. But I was even more excited about the fact that I now knew the name of my enemy.

As soon as I got home I Googled “bermudagrass in centipedegrass” and it only took a few minutes to find the answer in a University of Arkansas report entitled, Sod Farm Weed Control.

Here’s the bottom line: There are two chemicals that will suppress bermudagrass without harming centipedegrass. These are sethoxydim and clethodim. The brand names associated with sethoxydim are Poast, Segment, and Vantage. As for clethodim, it is sold under two brand names — Select and Envoy.

A search of the available herbicides reveals that a pint of Vantage is affordable and powerful. Since a pint of Vantage is enough to treat half an acre, and my bermudagrass invasion covers less than 200 square feet, it follows that a pint is more than enough to provide a hundred treatments for my problem area. However, the University of Arkansas report stresses the importance of limiting the number of treatments to twice a year.

If you need some Vantage to get rid of your bermudagrass problem, the best price I could find online was at ePestSolutions.com.

Fighting Fungus

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It was early summer when I first noticed the small brown spot on my front lawn in Houston, Texas. My initial suspect was the neighbor’s yellow lab. The dog’s name was “Honey” and she sometimes got out and wandered the neighborhood. I never actually saw Honey urinating. However, I had seen her taking a nap in the vicinity of that nasty brown spot. A large tree nearby shaded the area and made it a perfect location for a dog nap. As you can imagine, I was not happy with Honey. Muttering a few choice words under my breath, I drowned the brown spot with water from my garden hose in hopes that the otherwise lush green lawn would take over and eliminate the unsightly spot.

Over the period of several weeks, that 8 inch spot turned into a 4 foot area that was joined by another rapidly growing brown circle that started about 6 feet away. I tried watering the area more often but that seemed to make it worse. Nearly all the browning turf was in the shaded area of my lawn. Then it dawned on me. My lawn killer liked shade and moisture. Could it be a fungus?

Eureka!! I found it. Feeling foolish for not acting sooner, I Googled “lawn fungus” and started reading. One of the sites I visited explained that my turf variety, Centipedegrass, is prone to getting “Brown Patch” disease which is caused by a fungus. Wikipedia has an excellent article on Brown Patch if you want to know more about it.

Brown Patch troubles can sometimes be caused by well-meaning owners who don’t realize they are mistreating their lawn. For example, I discovered in my recent reading that Centipedegrass does not like being watered too often. It prefers a deep soak once or twice a week. Guess who was watering almost daily. Centipedegrass also performs better at lower mowing heights. One expert recommended a 1 to 1.5-inch mowing height. Another expert said 1.5-inches to 2.5-inches was the preferred mowing height. Somewhere along the way I picked up the idea that during the heat of the summer I should increase my mowing height to 3 or 4 inches. Again, I thought I was helping my lawn but the extra height and over-watering turned my Centipedegrass lawn into a fungus incubator.

Centipedegrass has another characteristic that I knew nothing about until recently. Compared to other turf grasses, Centipedegrass needs very little nitrogen to thrive. It is sometimes referred to as “The Lazy Man’s Lawn” because it is naturally slow-growing and requires little or no fertilizer. In fact, over-feeding Centipedegrass is a good way to set it up for a Brown Patch attack. Researchers at Penn State found that “Brown Patch thrives on lush and succulent turf grass that have high nitrogen levels versus grass maintained with moderate levels.” Guess who over-fed his Centipedegrass this Spring?

My neighbor’s dog was not to blame for the brown dead spots in my lawn. I was the culprit. Not knowing any better, I had created the ideal habitat for the Fungus that produces Brown Patch. The good news is that help is available. Brown Patch can be treated with fungicide.

My choice for a fungicide was based on a recommendation from a “lawn expert” at my local nursery. He handed me a 6.75lb bag of Scotts Lawn Fungus Control. If you go to Scotts.com and check it out, you will see that the Active Ingredient is 2.3% Thiophanate-methyl. Unfortunately, I learned too late that Thiophanate-methyl has been proven ineffective against Brown Patch when daily temperatures exceed 90 degrees F. Here in Houston, we just had one of the hottest summers on record. Consequently, my fungus problem is not yet under control. Fortunately, for me we are now in October and our daily highs are finally staying under 90 degrees F. One or two more applications should eliminate the Rhizoctonia species fungus. If you are plagued with lawn fungus as I was, and if your current temperatures are under 90 degrees F, then Scotts Lawn Fungus Control should work. Order yours here.

Scotts Lawn Fungus Control is a granular product that is designed to be spread by a drop spreador or a rotary spreador. I like my rotary spreador for getting the job done quickly. Mine is the Scotts Turf Builder Edge Guard Mini Broadcast Spreader. It is designed to handle up to 5000 square feet. If you need a lightweight spreader that gets the job done quickly, you can get one like mine here.