When to Aerate Your Lawn in New England For The Best Results

Lawn aeration in New England is one of the best ways to promote a thick, healthy, and thriving lawn. But in order to get the most out of this service, you also want to make sure that you’re performing it at the optimal time. Knowing when to aerate your lawn in New England can make a big difference in your overall results and satisfaction.

We understand that you might be frustrated about not understanding more about this vital service or when it’s needed. You want to feel confident that you’re doing all the right things for your lawn but you have questions and concerns.

Don’t worry, we’re here to help.

In this article, we’ll cover:

What is Lawn Aeration?
What Are the Benefits of Lawn Aeration in New England?
The Best Time to Aerate Your Lawn in New England
Preparing Your Lawn for Aeration
Benefits of Hiring a Professional for Lawn Aeration
Choosing The Best Lawn Care Services 

At the end of the day, we want to help set you up for success as you make the best decisions for your lawn.

What is Lawn Aeration?

Lawn aeration is the process of pulling small cores of soil from the ground and depositing them back on the lawn where they will break down and recycle nutrients back into the soil. Put simply, this helps your lawn to breathe.

This also creates a more favorable environment for your root system to grow. This is important as healthy roots equate to a healthier lawn. It’s what is going on at the subsurface level that truly matters.

What Are The Benefits of Lawn aeration in New England?

There are some important benefits that you can expect from lawn aeration. These benefits include the following.

• Reduced soil compaction. New England lawns tend to become easily compacted. This can make it difficult for water, oxygen, and nutrients to penetrate down to the root zone where they’re needed to help your lawn grow. But lawn aeration helps to break up soil compaction. This is what we mean when we say aeration helps your lawn to breathe.
  
  
• Breaking up thatch. Another benefit of lawn aeration in New England is that it helps to break up that layer of thatch that often starts growing at the surface. This is that organic material that you might see at the top layer of your lawn. It often looks straw-like. Too much thatch can be a problem because it also prevents oxygen, nutrients, and water from penetrating your soil. A heavy layer of thatch can also become a location for pests like chinch bugs to hang out. But aeration can help break this layer up.
  
  
• Creating seed-to-soil contact. Lawn aeration when performed at the same time as overseeding (which is our recommendation) will provide valuable seed-to-soil contact that your grass seed needs to grow. The seeds will fall into the holes made during aeration and will have the best chance of germinating. 
  
  
• Better results from lawn care services. If you’re having lawn care services like fertilization and weed control performed and you have a compacted lawn, you aren’t going to get maximum value out of these services. If the products being used for these services cannot penetrate that compacted layer, they aren’t going to do you much good.
  
  
• A healthier lawn. In summary, lawn aeration is going to help you have a healthier lawn. Lawns that are properly aerated tend to grow stronger and healthier and have fewer weeds over time.

The Best Time to Aerate Your Lawn in New England

Fall is the best time to aerate a lawn in the Northeast. 

There are two main reasons for this.

For one, the fall is the best time to grow grass. That’s because the conditions are optimal for growth. The air is cooling down but the soil is still warm. 

When you try to grow grass in the spring, it does not have much time to germinate and grow before it is subject to the intense heat of the summer sun. The summer is a rough time in general for lawns as it will likely also have to undergo periods of drought.

The other reason to aerate and overseed in the fall is because of efforts to control crabgrass. The products used to prevent crabgrass germination will also prevent your new grass from germinating. This is an important reason why you’ll want to hold off on aerating and overseeding until the fall.

Preparing your lawn for aeration

There are a few ways that you can prep your lawn for an aeration service.

For one, you can water your lawn to moisten the soil. You don’t want it soggy wet, but moist soil can be helpful. You can also mow the lawn a couple of days before aeration.

One of the most important things that we also recommend ahead of aeration is to pick up fallen leaves. If you have a heavy coating of leaves on your property, you’ll want to rake up as much as possible. The last thing that you want is for leaf cover to get in the way of blocking holes where your new grass seed is being planted.

Benefits of Hiring a Professional for Lawn Aeration

You might be wondering whether you can just perform lawn aeration yourself. While it’s true that you can rent an aerator, there are some downsides to DIY that you need to first consider.

• It’s laborious work. For one, we find that people don’t always realize how tough aeration can be. It will involve pushing around a heavy piece of machinery on your property. People often underestimate how exhausting this can be. It’s also more time consuming than people realize. You’re going to have to give up a free weekend to work on this. And, don’t forget, that you’ll need to deal with the hassles of renting the equipment, which means getting on their schedule and also transporting the aerator. 
  
  
• Equipment performance. Another consideration is the performance of the equipment that you’re renting. It’s likely been used many times before you and might be clunky and may perform subpar. It’s also important to note that the plug depth of the pulled cores is important. In our experience, DIYers aren’t getting as deep a plug depth with rental equipment. In general, a rented aerator just isn’t going to be as high-quality with a commercial-grade piece of equipment used by a pro.
  
  
• Danger and risk. You should also consider that there is danger and risk associated with operating heavy machinery. You could do damage to your property, a parked vehicle, your sidewalk, or even run over something on your lawn. You could also risk personal injury if you don’t know how to properly operate the machinery.

Choosing Lawn Care Services in Southern New Hampshire, Maine, and Northeastern Massachusetts

Getting the most out of a lawn aeration service comes down to choosing a company that invests in high-quality equipment and also the best grass seed. While plenty of lawn care companies offer these services, the best results will come from those that don’t skimp or cut corners.

At Seacoast Turf Care, we want to see you get the best possible results from your lawn aeration service. We truly believe that aeration and overseeding are two of the best things that you can do to produce a thick, healthy, and thriving lawn.

Want to learn more about what makes us a great choice for your lawn care needs? At Seacoast Turf Care, we service NH towns near Stratham, North Hampton, Exeter and many more. Get lawn care pricing for your Southern NH, Southern Maine, or Northeastern Massachusetts property. 

Image Source: sprinkler system watering grass