With the Fall season right around the corner, many yards will soon require dethatching, that is the process of removing the top layer of soil from the yard, so it doesn’t smother itself to death. Here are ten tips to help in the process of dethatching.
The most obvious advice that can be given when dethatching the lawn in fall, is to check if the lawn actually needs to be dethatched. This can easily be told by looking at the top layer of soil. If the soil looks like there is a lot of dead and decomposing things smothering the top, dethatching is the probably the best bet.
Following that, make sure that the lawn is not dethatched all at once, if it is, one could very well ending up killing off large patches of the lawn. This is completely counterproductive to the philosophy of dethatch in order to help the lawn grow, and also just looks bad.
The thatch that is cleared from the yard will not just blow away in the wind, it will sit there in large piles smothering large patches of grass. Due to this it is extremely important that the thatch is cleared out of the yard once it has been removed from it.
Make sure the lawn is slightly wet before dethatching, this will allow any dethatching tool to pull up the the the thatch with ease. However be careful not to dethatch when the ground is too wet. If this is done, the dethatching tool will go too deep and end up pulling out the good soil as well as thatch.
If the lawn is fertilized before being dethatched, the dethatching tool will just end up pulling out the fertilizer as well as the thatch. To prevent this from happening, do not use fertilizer on a lawn for at least a month before it is dethatched.
For small patches of lawn, or a small area in general, a dethatching tool is really not necessary. A tool called a cavex rake is much more efficient for these small areas, and is probably much more cost effective than using a power dethatching machine.
That being said, a powerful machine is much more efficient for those large lawns and big patches of grass. Although it might cost a bit more to get one of these dethatching machines, it will save a lot of time, effort, and hard labor in the long run.
When dethatching a lawn, make sure to use quality tools when doing it. There are some types of rakes and dethatching tools that just do not do a good enough job and should be avoided. Brand name dethatching tools that have quality, can usually be found at a local Lowes or Home Depot.
Whether using a rake or a dethatching tool, never go over the lawn just once and assume the dethatching is done. Lots of thatch can build up in a lawn fairly quickly, and therefore to be safe one should go over the lawn at least three times to make sure the job is done right.
Finally, it is always better to get rid of a bit of the good soil than to leave thatch behind. In other words one might as well overdue the dethatching process to the point where they destroy some good soil, than letting the thatch remain to smother their lawn over the coming months.
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Steps to Dethatching
