►►► Want to fix your lawn for the long haul but don't know where to start? I can help! Click here right now and get started today: turfmech.link/dont-know-where-to-start ◄◄◄
This is one or the best of and most informative videos i ever found on RUclips I do appreciate your time and commitment to share a valuable information with the rest of us 🙏
Take my advice as someone with compacted and uneven clay soil that I've spent years trying to remediate, and who once left cores on the lawn one season to break down and reincorporate: don't leave them unless you want your lawn to turn into a bumpy disaster. They won't break down or reincorporate, they will just sit there permanently unless you manually pick them up or scalp the lawn down to an inch with your mower and grind everything up. The cores shown here are nice big ones with healthy soil, which is no surprise given his maintenance and top dressing practices. Side note: I've performed dethatching almost annually in the fall with an electric unit prior to aeration, and this has the added benefit of also slightly leveling out some uneven spots at the soil surface caused by frost heaving and uneven drainage due to the clay content, and allows the coring machine to make better contact especially when the grass is shorter, usually around two inches at aeration time. Over time this all helps to level out uneven compacted soil without going nuclear and redoing the entire lawn.
Thank you for answering the question I was just about to pose. I also have hard clay soil that I plan to start amending myself. I was thinking that cores of clay would not be useful for anything...other than the garbage can.
Wish I had seen this before I started this project. I picked up a hand aerator to do an area of about 2000 sq ft of my back lawn that I use to practice hitting gold balls - so I want it like fairway grass. I've spent a fair amount of time, getting rid of weeds using Tenacity, raking to get rid of dead grass, adding seed, patching, etc. It looks a lot better but it is not as thick as I want it to be. The ground it like rock hard - I can barely get a screw driver inserted except for a few areas - which mean is it not real good for chipping practice either. So I decided that coring was the thing to do. My plan is to do it in stages. Water first to soften the soil, core an area maybe 100 sq ft or so, rake the plugs and any dead grass away, add some cheap potting soil (I picked up 10 bags so far) and rake, or broom it in, then over seed, then go back and rake it again and maybe add more soil. I do have a good sized bag of chicken manure I can mix with the potting soil if that would be worthwhile. I decided on some cheap potting soil cause it was inexpensive and it has some nutrients and vermiculite which should keep it from packing. I have fertilized a couple of times so what grass I do have is a healthy looking green, just not very thick and soft. Hopefully this plan will work, but any ideas would be appreciated.
Love how you cover so many products and techniques that I never knew about. You could call your channel “The Lawn Lab”! I only picked up little tips along the way from local nurseries and customers to make MY lawn better. This was before the internet, for the most part, and I was too busy trying to mow my 45 accounts and coach soccer, baseball, basketball, etc:) I only did weed control and fert for about 1/3 of my accounts as I found that it was just too much for one guy and was really a whole other business. A few customers asked about aeration and I tried renting one for awhile from time to time and would do my, and my mother’s, Bermuda sections while I had it but it became too much of a hassle and time drag. Eventually I just directed them to TruGreen for aeration and “professional” turf management, although I worked for them one summer and found their process to be horrible, unless you got lucky and got one of their longtime techs who knew what they were doing and actually cared about their job. Was wondering if you ever top dress with a top soil and sand mix? I always used top soil with some playground sand mixed in and would broadcast by hand after spiking and seeding, then throw a little more seed on top with some milorganite.
I grew up before the internet but in college it became dominant. I can't imagine an adult life before it. So much learning available at all times. I've been reading phd papers and university abstracts about many of these topics all year long, never would have been possible 20-30 years ago. Anyway, as for the top-dress with soil sand, we applied a yard of soil sand mix to the project lawn in June this year. That lawn was in super bad shape in early May and it's due for overseeding now. I think the sandier the soil the better for top-dressing but the more soil compost in it the thinner quantity you need. Unless you are leveling I think straight worm castings are best for soil nutrition, they are expensive but you don't need as much and it would be hard financially to afford enough of it to mulch your existing grass down. My local nursery has a fish fertilizer soil/sand mix. I was thinking about using it for some minor leveling this fall, along sidewalks mostly and a couple small low spots I have. Still not committed to doing that though as it's a lot of physical labor and time is hard to come by these days.
@@TurfMechanic I hear ya. Gotta help momma with them rugrats SOMETIME:) Lawn stuff is scarce up here to say the least, even in Summit County, which is 45 min. away so I’ll have to look into places in Denver that might have some of the things you’re talking about. Heck, I had to pay $500 for a dump truck load of the closest (45 mi.) halfway decent topsoil and another $400 to have a guy come with a backhoe to dump around the yard for me to hand spread. Didn’t amount to more than a half an inch overall but was enough to really get the grass to take off. Problem is the surface underneath is either compacted clay or rock, so plugging is out of the question. Bought a drag around spiker and already dinged it up pretty good on one time around by hitting more rock than dirt! It’s crazy that I’ve gotten such a thick stand so quickly on this crap. I’ve added 30-40 bags of topsoil just leveling and broadcasting to try to slowly build up more soil above the rock and will put down another 30 or so when I seed in a few weeks. Couldn’t bring myself to do the kbg seeding a few weeks ago like you suggested because I found a lot of seed from late spring/early summer that still hasn’t germinated! You just can’t get enough water to it by hand up here due to the dryness and intense sun and are totally dependent on the spring melt and snows to get any real germination. We own our well but not the water and outside water use is prohibited, hence the hand watering, as people would see sprinklers from the road and prob turn me in to the water gestapo:) Finally got the bright idea to buy a timer, another hose, and a couple of sprinklers, and set em to go off before the sun comes up!
So glad to here that Ray! We've got a couple 89 and 90 degree days coming up this weekend but then we're down into the 70's, next week I think fall is finally starting here in KFalls, can't wait to see everything perk up again and the smoke push out of our area. Good luck with your lawn over the next 2-3 months!
Me too, thanks for watching. Today for me was dominated by applying five different biochar products to the lawn, im exhausted, lol. Ideally one or two apps like this every year will help minimize irrigation requirements through the summer and allow for smaller doses of fert. It's a long play though.
Hi Brian. Did I miss a segment? You were doing a checkerboard test with iron. I never saw results. How that turn out? Stay well stay safe and thank you.
First one to ask, lol. I was surprised, I noticed the checkerboard pattern slightly for the first week after application in August then everything under the jungle gym just turned a slightly darker green. Perhaps it's because a lot of my grass is KBG and is connected in the rhizome system? Overall I didn't hit the grass hard with iron so it was only visible to me for the first week. Having just dethatched, fertilized, and core aerated the whole area just looks a little healthier than the rest of the nearby yard but not by much. Next time I do an iron app for the channel I'll go heavy on a larger geometric segment so the results are more visible; still learning here, I think the results would have more pattern like on a straight rye or fescue lawn since they bunch and don't spread laterally under the soil surface.
great information ty.. I have heavy clay soil the ph level is 3 i get a lot of surface water when it rains I just cored the lawn manually and wondering if I can insert lime directly inside the cored holes since it is so below the required ph of 6 - 7
Love your content! I use a reel mower and mow relatively short 3/4-1". I want to aerate without top dressing this season and was wondering if using my rotary to chop up the cores would be ok? I'm not worried about dulling the blades as I mainly use it for cleaning up debris from the yard.
Good question, I don't see a problem with it but I doubt they'll chop the cores up to your liking. rotary mowers don't go much lower than 1 1/4 and their suction is unlikely to pick the cores up enough to mulch them efficiently. Possibly, big possibly here, you could run a leveling rake all over the cores to break them up enough for a mower to finish off the mulching but it's just a guess. You'd have to experiment. Otherwise rake and remove is the best option. Took me a couple hours to rake and remove cores from my 2500 soft main lawn where I filmed this video.
@RonSullivanHitting I know, me too. I bought a lawn sweeper hoping that would do the job, I even made a video about it but even the sweeper had problems with the cores unfortunately
Thanks for the informative videos! Would you say core aeration is better than spike aeration? I'm up north and it'll be quite cold in a couple of months if that makes any difference.
Just found your channel and subscribed this week after searching for videos and info all over the internet! Thank you! We just moved from TX to Colorado Springs, Co July of 2020. Not sure what the previous owner done with the lawn but The grass seems to look worse this summer with drought brown spots, crabgrass and dandelion. Water restriction limited us to only 3 time/ week , though I hand watering to add some help. Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated of what should be done to improve. Thank you!
I would not use it as a substitute, it's way to expensive to use it is the volume that you'd use peat moss. Worm castings are like biological accelerators, it provides tons of new microbial life to a lawn which works hard to transform unavailable minerals in the lawn soil to plant available nutrients, peat moss is an organic growing medium that is affordable and clean, it adds to the organic matter in the soil and holds water, and biochar is like a home for mycorrhizae, excess nutrients, water, and microbes. All three serve different purposes. I'd rather have some of all three than a lot of only one of them. Now, you don't have to use all three, I'm just trying to explain why all three is better than using only one or two of them.
Hi Brian, I’m looking forward to the rest of the biochar videos. I am using The Anderson’s HumiChar and NEXT Humic12 this year. Plan to use NEXT Humic12 again next year. I’m Interested in your thoughts on which biochar to pair with it - The Anderson’s BioChar DG?
Hey Ron, I literally applied some Anderson's BioChar DG today to the lawn along with four other biochar products. Video will be out in the next three or six days...it may be a dry video, we'll see how creative I get. The Humichar product was on my list to try this round but I'm going to lump that together with a future video on biochar blends along with a product by Yard mastery (BioCharken), Wakefield, Willow, and one or two others. The Anderson's DG was easily the easiest to spread but it's also the least carbon heavy, contains a lot of ash and incidental nutrients along with binding agents so it won't all stay in the lawn as long due to microbial breakdown of the organic fractions. I have a jug of Humic12 in my garage that I almost never use because humic acid is included in so many things these days. If you aren't using thatch digesters, RGS, or liquid aeration products then it's probably got it's place in the mix. I'll have a good bit more info on biochar coming out in the month of sept; I'm still researching and compiling my thoughts. Hope you stick around for it all!
It's a good question and I'll give you a less than cool answer - it's all about how much time and money you want to spend. BioChar is awesome, if you can also add in worm castings, azomite, and compost then your lawn will take off. Peat moss can help with small ph lowering in the short term and water retention but doesn't add nutrition to the soil. I'd recommend azomite because it's cheap and easy to spread and biochar if you can afford to apply it. Worm castings can be as high as $900 / yard and they are hard to spread but ohh man, if you can do it your lawn will respond hard. Peat moss will be better than nothing and it will add organic matter to the soil for sure just won't feed the lawn as much.
I would overseed after leveling because most seed germinates best when it's not burried deep. Level, then seed, then lightly rake and tamp the seed into the newly leveled lawn. It will work amazing for you especially if you take the time to spread a light top dressing of peat over the high spots in the lawn.
I agree a lawn with worms helps with all that but if you were to visit mine you'd see that my insane amount of worms aren't keeping up with the legacy problem.
@@Paul-dy8mo lol, I hope to be a legacy problem one day! 😆 this house is only four year old for me. I'm going for as natural as possible these days. Thanks for your comments, hope to see you around in future vids, especially in the coming season. 😉
my yard was also loaded with worms,,which also brought in a family of moles and now there are tunnels everywhere because of the food source in the ground smh
Sorry Omar, I am always improving and leaning how to deliver info better. My material this season is tighter than last season and better than the year prior. Hope to see you in the comments again in my newest material! 👊
Yikes, I just did this same thing last week unintentionally too! Lesson learned. Haven’t started watering it yet, and not sure what to do. Did your lawn eventually recover?
►►► Want to fix your lawn for the long haul but don't know where to start? I can help! Click here right now and get started today: turfmech.link/dont-know-where-to-start ◄◄◄
This is one or the best of and most informative videos i ever found on RUclips I do appreciate your time and commitment to share a valuable information with the rest of us 🙏
That is so awesome to hear; thanks so much for that comment made my day. :)
Take my advice as someone with compacted and uneven clay soil that I've spent years trying to remediate, and who once left cores on the lawn one season to break down and reincorporate: don't leave them unless you want your lawn to turn into a bumpy disaster. They won't break down or reincorporate, they will just sit there permanently unless you manually pick them up or scalp the lawn down to an inch with your mower and grind everything up. The cores shown here are nice big ones with healthy soil, which is no surprise given his maintenance and top dressing practices.
Side note: I've performed dethatching almost annually in the fall with an electric unit prior to aeration, and this has the added benefit of also slightly leveling out some uneven spots at the soil surface caused by frost heaving and uneven drainage due to the clay content, and allows the coring machine to make better contact especially when the grass is shorter, usually around two inches at aeration time. Over time this all helps to level out uneven compacted soil without going nuclear and redoing the entire lawn.
Thank you for answering the question I was just about to pose. I also have hard clay soil that I plan to start amending myself. I was thinking that cores of clay would not be useful for anything...other than the garbage can.
Absolutely. I’ve done this but never seen a video on it. I even put a shot of lime down too.
Wish I had seen this before I started this project. I picked up a hand aerator to do an area of about 2000 sq ft of my back lawn that I use to practice hitting gold balls - so I want it like fairway grass. I've spent a fair amount of time, getting rid of weeds using Tenacity, raking to get rid of dead grass, adding seed, patching, etc. It looks a lot better but it is not as thick as I want it to be. The ground it like rock hard - I can barely get a screw driver inserted except for a few areas - which mean is it not real good for chipping practice either.
So I decided that coring was the thing to do. My plan is to do it in stages. Water first to soften the soil, core an area maybe 100 sq ft or so, rake the plugs and any dead grass away, add some cheap potting soil (I picked up 10 bags so far) and rake, or broom it in, then over seed, then go back and rake it again and maybe add more soil. I do have a good sized bag of chicken manure I can mix with the potting soil if that would be worthwhile. I decided on some cheap potting soil cause it was inexpensive and it has some nutrients and vermiculite which should keep it from packing. I have fertilized a couple of times so what grass I do have is a healthy looking green, just not very thick and soft. Hopefully this plan will work, but any ideas would be appreciated.
Love how you cover so many products and techniques that I never knew about. You could call your channel “The Lawn Lab”! I only picked up little tips along the way from local nurseries and customers to make MY lawn better. This was before the internet, for the most part, and I was too busy trying to mow my 45 accounts and coach soccer, baseball, basketball, etc:) I only did weed control and fert for about 1/3 of my accounts as I found that it was just too much for one guy and was really a whole other business. A few customers asked about aeration and I tried renting one for awhile from time to time and would do my, and my mother’s, Bermuda sections while I had it but it became too much of a hassle and time drag. Eventually I just directed them to TruGreen for aeration and “professional” turf management, although I worked for them one summer and found their process to be horrible, unless you got lucky and got one of their longtime techs who knew what they were doing and actually cared about their job. Was wondering if you ever top dress with a top soil and sand mix? I always used top soil with some playground sand mixed in and would broadcast by hand after spiking and seeding, then throw a little more seed on top with some milorganite.
I grew up before the internet but in college it became dominant. I can't imagine an adult life before it. So much learning available at all times. I've been reading phd papers and university abstracts about many of these topics all year long, never would have been possible 20-30 years ago. Anyway, as for the top-dress with soil sand, we applied a yard of soil sand mix to the project lawn in June this year. That lawn was in super bad shape in early May and it's due for overseeding now. I think the sandier the soil the better for top-dressing but the more soil compost in it the thinner quantity you need. Unless you are leveling I think straight worm castings are best for soil nutrition, they are expensive but you don't need as much and it would be hard financially to afford enough of it to mulch your existing grass down. My local nursery has a fish fertilizer soil/sand mix. I was thinking about using it for some minor leveling this fall, along sidewalks mostly and a couple small low spots I have. Still not committed to doing that though as it's a lot of physical labor and time is hard to come by these days.
@@TurfMechanic I hear ya. Gotta help momma with them rugrats SOMETIME:) Lawn stuff is scarce up here to say the least, even in Summit County, which is 45 min. away so I’ll have to look into places in Denver that might have some of the things you’re talking about. Heck, I had to pay $500 for a dump truck load of the closest (45 mi.) halfway decent topsoil and another $400 to have a guy come with a backhoe to dump around the yard for me to hand spread. Didn’t amount to more than a half an inch overall but was enough to really get the grass to take off. Problem is the surface underneath is either compacted clay or rock, so plugging is out of the question. Bought a drag around spiker and already dinged it up pretty good on one time around by hitting more rock than dirt! It’s crazy that I’ve gotten such a thick stand so quickly on this crap. I’ve added 30-40 bags of topsoil just leveling and broadcasting to try to slowly build up more soil above the rock and will put down another 30 or so when I seed in a few weeks. Couldn’t bring myself to do the kbg seeding a few weeks ago like you suggested because I found a lot of seed from late spring/early summer that still hasn’t germinated! You just can’t get enough water to it by hand up here due to the dryness and intense sun and are totally dependent on the spring melt and snows to get any real germination. We own our well but not the water and outside water use is prohibited, hence the hand watering, as people would see sprinklers from the road and prob turn me in to the water gestapo:) Finally got the bright idea to buy a timer, another hose, and a couple of sprinklers, and set em to go off before the sun comes up!
What a juicy, informative video. Awesome job!
Thanks Steve, I love juicy! 😁
Thank you for all that you share. My lawn and landscaping is really improving thanks to your guidance!
So glad to here that Ray! We've got a couple 89 and 90 degree days coming up this weekend but then we're down into the 70's, next week I think fall is finally starting here in KFalls, can't wait to see everything perk up again and the smoke push out of our area. Good luck with your lawn over the next 2-3 months!
Great video Brian. Looking forward to the results.
Me too, thanks for watching. Today for me was dominated by applying five different biochar products to the lawn, im exhausted, lol. Ideally one or two apps like this every year will help minimize irrigation requirements through the summer and allow for smaller doses of fert. It's a long play though.
Please explain to that sweet little girl the difference between ground plugs and puppy plugs.
That was very helpful! I am starting Aeration in a few days.
That's great to hear! Your lawn will love it this Fall! Thanks for watching Betty!
Hi Brian. Did I miss a segment? You were doing a checkerboard test with iron. I never saw results. How that turn out? Stay well stay safe and thank you.
First one to ask, lol. I was surprised, I noticed the checkerboard pattern slightly for the first week after application in August then everything under the jungle gym just turned a slightly darker green. Perhaps it's because a lot of my grass is KBG and is connected in the rhizome system? Overall I didn't hit the grass hard with iron so it was only visible to me for the first week. Having just dethatched, fertilized, and core aerated the whole area just looks a little healthier than the rest of the nearby yard but not by much. Next time I do an iron app for the channel I'll go heavy on a larger geometric segment so the results are more visible; still learning here, I think the results would have more pattern like on a straight rye or fescue lawn since they bunch and don't spread laterally under the soil surface.
brian - you mentioned Worm Castings after aerating-how much/application rate ? Thanks
great information ty.. I have heavy clay soil the ph level is 3 i get a lot of surface water when it rains I just cored the lawn manually and wondering if I can insert lime directly inside the cored holes since it is so below the required ph of 6 - 7
Thanks for the content 🍃🍁🍂
Love your content! I use a reel mower and mow relatively short 3/4-1". I want to aerate without top dressing this season and was wondering if using my rotary to chop up the cores would be ok? I'm not worried about dulling the blades as I mainly use it for cleaning up debris from the yard.
Good question, I don't see a problem with it but I doubt they'll chop the cores up to your liking. rotary mowers don't go much lower than 1 1/4 and their suction is unlikely to pick the cores up enough to mulch them efficiently. Possibly, big possibly here, you could run a leveling rake all over the cores to break them up enough for a mower to finish off the mulching but it's just a guess. You'd have to experiment. Otherwise rake and remove is the best option. Took me a couple hours to rake and remove cores from my 2500 soft main lawn where I filmed this video.
@@TurfMechanic Thank you for the response! I was hoping there was a way around rake and remove :)
@RonSullivanHitting I know, me too. I bought a lawn sweeper hoping that would do the job, I even made a video about it but even the sweeper had problems with the cores unfortunately
How would i level with the left over cores? just spread them out in the low spots as even as possible? thx
Thanks for the informative videos! Would you say core aeration is better than spike aeration? I'm up north and it'll be quite cold in a couple of months if that makes any difference.
Just found your channel and subscribed this week after searching for videos and info all over the internet! Thank you! We just moved from TX to Colorado Springs, Co July of 2020. Not sure what the previous owner done with the lawn but The grass seems to look worse this summer with drought brown spots, crabgrass and dandelion. Water restriction limited us to only 3 time/ week , though I hand watering to add some help. Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated of what should be done to improve. Thank you!
If i use Bio Char is that a substitute for peat moss and worm castings or should i use all three
I would not use it as a substitute, it's way to expensive to use it is the volume that you'd use peat moss. Worm castings are like biological accelerators, it provides tons of new microbial life to a lawn which works hard to transform unavailable minerals in the lawn soil to plant available nutrients, peat moss is an organic growing medium that is affordable and clean, it adds to the organic matter in the soil and holds water, and biochar is like a home for mycorrhizae, excess nutrients, water, and microbes. All three serve different purposes. I'd rather have some of all three than a lot of only one of them. Now, you don't have to use all three, I'm just trying to explain why all three is better than using only one or two of them.
Hi Brian, I’m looking forward to the rest of the biochar videos. I am using The Anderson’s HumiChar and NEXT Humic12 this year. Plan to use NEXT Humic12 again next year. I’m Interested in your thoughts on which biochar to pair with it - The Anderson’s BioChar DG?
Hey Ron, I literally applied some Anderson's BioChar DG today to the lawn along with four other biochar products. Video will be out in the next three or six days...it may be a dry video, we'll see how creative I get. The Humichar product was on my list to try this round but I'm going to lump that together with a future video on biochar blends along with a product by Yard mastery (BioCharken), Wakefield, Willow, and one or two others. The Anderson's DG was easily the easiest to spread but it's also the least carbon heavy, contains a lot of ash and incidental nutrients along with binding agents so it won't all stay in the lawn as long due to microbial breakdown of the organic fractions. I have a jug of Humic12 in my garage that I almost never use because humic acid is included in so many things these days. If you aren't using thatch digesters, RGS, or liquid aeration products then it's probably got it's place in the mix. I'll have a good bit more info on biochar coming out in the month of sept; I'm still researching and compiling my thoughts. Hope you stick around for it all!
Seed after the biochar?
What’s recommended after aerate? Bio char or peat moss?
It's a good question and I'll give you a less than cool answer - it's all about how much time and money you want to spend. BioChar is awesome, if you can also add in worm castings, azomite, and compost then your lawn will take off. Peat moss can help with small ph lowering in the short term and water retention but doesn't add nutrition to the soil. I'd recommend azomite because it's cheap and easy to spread and biochar if you can afford to apply it. Worm castings can be as high as $900 / yard and they are hard to spread but ohh man, if you can do it your lawn will respond hard. Peat moss will be better than nothing and it will add organic matter to the soil for sure just won't feed the lawn as much.
👍👍
11:10 of cores I should have known 😅
Wouldn’t use those cores for growing anything edible :)
If you scarify and than aerate, would you over-seed before or after leveling your lawn?
I would overseed after leveling because most seed germinates best when it's not burried deep. Level, then seed, then lightly rake and tamp the seed into the newly leveled lawn. It will work amazing for you especially if you take the time to spread a light top dressing of peat over the high spots in the lawn.
A natural lawn has worms that aerate without drying out the soil and causing weeds, they take care of thatch too...
I agree a lawn with worms helps with all that but if you were to visit mine you'd see that my insane amount of worms aren't keeping up with the legacy problem.
@@TurfMechanic I found after thirty years and three different properties that I was the legacy problem....
@@Paul-dy8mo lol, I hope to be a legacy problem one day! 😆 this house is only four year old for me. I'm going for as natural as possible these days. Thanks for your comments, hope to see you around in future vids, especially in the coming season. 😉
my yard was also loaded with worms,,which also brought in a family of moles and now there are tunnels everywhere because of the food source in the ground smh
Your videos are way to longwinded
Sorry Omar, I am always improving and leaning how to deliver info better. My material this season is tighter than last season and better than the year prior. Hope to see you in the comments again in my newest material! 👊
I messed up my lawn big time. This year. I mistakenly put grass and weed killer on my grass. I been wateting it a lot but now I'm getting algea in it.
Yikes, I just did this same thing last week unintentionally too! Lesson learned. Haven’t started watering it yet, and not sure what to do. Did your lawn eventually recover?