Core aeration is a crucial lawn care service that helps to improve the health and appearance of your lawn in Tennessee. This process involves removing small plugs of soil from your lawn to allow air, water, and nutrients to reach the roots. While core aeration is highly beneficial for your lawn, it still has distinct pros and cons that you'll want to consider. First, the process can be invasive for your lawn, but it's highly effective in loosening up compacted soil for better nutrient uptake and root development. Because of this, core aeration must be performed at the right time to ensure your grass is strong enough to endure it. The process also creates soil cores, which can be unsightly but will decompose eventually and release nutrients back into the soil.

What is core aeration?

Core aeration is a lawn care service that involves the mechanical process of removing small plugs of soil from your lawn using an aerator machine. This process creates small holes in the soil, which allows air, water, and nutrients to reach the roots of your grass. Core aeration is especially beneficial for lawns that have compacted soil, as it helps to loosen it up and create space for the roots to grow. The improved access to vital nutrients and the fortified root growth brought about by aerating the ground will make your lawn healthier and more resilient!

Core aeration helps break up thatch, which is a layer of dead grass and other organic material that can build up on your lawn.

What are the pros and cons of core aeration?

Lawn in Memphis, TN, with holes and soil cores.

Core aeration is a crucial lawn care service that can greatly benefit the health and appearance of your lawn. However, it's important to understand both the pros and cons of this process to ensure that it's the right choice for your lawn. Here are some of the pros and cons of core aeration:

  • Core aeration is an invasive process. This process involves mechanically pulling up plugs of soil, which can be invasive to your lawn. It can cause minimal stress and disruption to your lawn. However, the process is also highly effective at loosening compacted soil, creating passageways for nutrients and resources to reach the roots of your grass, and breaking up the thatch layer. Your lawn can heal quickly from the process, depending on when you do it.
  • Core aeration has to be performed at the right time. If it's performed at the wrong time, it can stress out your lawn. However, you can avoid this by scheduling this service when your lawn is strong enough to endure it. Ideally, the best time to have cool-season lawns aerated is in the fall. Meanwhile, warm-season grasses benefit well from aeration performed in the spring.
  • Core aeration leaves behind soil cores. Some property owners don't find these very appealing, but as they decompose, they return nutrients to your lawn. You can also break them up with a rake or go over them with a lawn mower to speed up the decomposition process.
The soil cores created during the aeration process take about 2 weeks to fully decompose!

Give us a call today to schedule our core aeration service.

Aerating your lawn is a powerful lawn care process that will improve its health, bolster the roots, and build up its resilience to stressors. Here at Picture Perfect Landscapes, we offer our core aeration service to residential and commercial properties, as well as HOAs, in Memphis, Midtown Memphis, East Memphis, and nearby areas in Tennessee.

We aerate cool-season lawns around September or October and warm-season lawns between May and June. This service is extremely beneficial for your lawn, and we recommend scheduling it every year. Give us a call at (901) 246-7656 to sign up for our core aeration service today!