The Benefits of Aerating Your Yard
You can aerate your lawn once a year, and this is a great time to do so. After aeration, you can top dress the lawn with a rich soil. We suggest Soil Mender Raised Bed Mix, which contains soil enrichers like peat and expanded shale. Top dressing the lawn provides it with a natural source of fertilizer, which can help cut back on chemical use.
There are home-use aerators available, if you are a Do-it-Yourselfer. We offer this service through our Landscaping department, along with many others. Give us a call with any questions you might have.
Lawn aeration is the secret weapon in making your lawn healthy. Aeration involves making holes in the lawn either by pushing a rod into it or by coring, extracting a plug of soil. By aerating your lawn you provide the following benefits to your lawn and its root system.
--Oxygen gets to the roots and the soil allowing it to breathe.
--Organic fertilizers and nutrients get access to the root system.
--Water is able to better soak the soil and reach the root system.
--Helps to break up thatch.
--Tight, compacted soil is loosened up allowing the root system to grow.

Here in West Texas, we have mostly hard, clay soil or caliche ridden soils. Because of this, it is better to utilize rod aeration (poking a hole in the dirt) rather that core aeration (removing a plug of dirt from the punched hole). It is extremely difficult to core aerate heavy clay soils or soils that have stones, rocks or tree roots below the soil surface.