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Do My Own Lawn Care - Spring Lawn Preparation

By DoMyOwn staff

If you plan to aerate your lawn, it is important to apply herbicides properly. In this video, we go over methods to make your lawn green and fresh for Spring!

 Do My Own Lawn Care  - Spring Lawn Preparation Video Play

Video Transcript

Guess what day it is?

Yup, it's that magical time of the year when we bust this bad boy out, fire it up, and aerate the yard.

So here's what needed to come together to make sure I could aerate my yard. Number one: I needed 50% greenup. Check. Number two: I wanted to make sure those freezing temps really were behind us. I know I said that in the last video when I scalped the Bermuda down, but I wanted to double check and really make sure.

So I looked at a ten day forecast - it's out of the question, we're not facing freezing temps. We're good to go.

Now before I fire up this up and get to work let me touch on a few other things. The best time to aerate your yard is during the growing season. You want to make sure your grass or turf can bounce back from hitting with a core aerator like this and fill in any open areas where the soil plugs are removed.

Now this is going to vary depending on where you live and the type of soil that you have, but down here in the South especially here in Georgia... because we have that clay-based soil, we need to hit it at least once a year.

If you've got a sandy-based soil like the folks down in Florida you can do that once a year but typically you do that every other year. If you live in an area with an arid climate we recommend aerating twice a year because it's going to enhance your turf growth and health.

Another thing you're gonna want to try to do is control the weeds in your yard before you aerate, which is why it's so important to put down a pre and post emergent.

Aerating like this can spread weed seeds throughout the yard in areas that you don't want. So like I said, you want to make sure to control those, get rid of them as much as possible before you core aerate.

If you've got a newly planted lawn, you want to wait at least a year before you core aerate like this because you want to make sure those grass roots can really establish themselves before you punch on them with something like this.

We also recommend you aerate when the soil is moist but not saturated. The tines on the core aerator can penetrate more deeply on soil that is moist versus if it's just bone dry.

And the reason we say not to aerate when the soil is saturated... soil that is just too wet will clog up those tines on your coil aerator... so again, moist but not saturated.

You want your lawn to absorb at least one inch of water either through rainfall or irrigation just before you aerate. So if you've got rainfall predicted on a Monday and clear blue skies on a Tuesday... then Tuesday's the day to get to it.

One last thing before we fire this puppy up and get to work: Don't aerate during drought and high heat. If you do this during those types of conditions you will stress your lawn out by allowing the heat to dry out the soil so, just avoid that.

So... I think it's time to fire it up and get to work.

Aerating is done. Now it's time to spray the other half of my pre and post emergents. Now as for my split application that I've been talking about ever since I did it there's two main reasons I tackled it this way. One: I wanted to make sure I got a good even coverage. I wanted to make sure I hit everything.

If I missed anything on my first application, this second application should really do a good job on taking care of it. And again, putting down something is better than nothing: Waiting, aerating, and putting down a whole application... which is what I did last year and it gave me some problems.

Again, you put down a Pre-Emergent to give you a protective barrier. If you aerate after you put down the pre-emergent, you're breaking that barrier. Again this is all part of my plan, I knew I was gonna aerate at this point in the game so that's why I put down half of what I normally put down to give my yard some sort of protective barrier.

Now that I've aerated, I've broken that barrier and that's why I'm going to go through and put down the other half of what I normally put down and again, put a protective barrier in my yard.

And so yeah, I'm still putting down the amount I normally put out, I'm just spreading it out.

What I normally put down, that gives me about 5 months of control. Doing it this way, splitting the application, it gives me 7 months. So in other words, I'm extending my control.

We bought about 6-8 weeks with that first application and I would add that it would probably go a little further than that. But with the second application I'm getting that same 5 months of control plus the 6-8 weeks I bought from the first application.

So in other words, again, I'm extending my control. So I've aerated the front yard, I've mixed up my chemicals... time to spray.

I think it's pretty obvious you can tell when the Bermuda ends and the fescue begins.

Like I briefly mentioned, my needs in my yard are going to be completely different from my neighbor's yard and that's just right next door.

Everybody's yard is going to be different: it's not a one size fits all program. Everything that I'm doing here is going to be different for your yard... we just want to give you the tips and the tricks and the general directions you're gonna head in and things you need to think about when trying to get your lawn program up and going for your turf.

And just like that we are done. Now you don't have to hear me say "Last half app" anymore. You may have noticed I did not touch the backyard with an aerator and that's on purpose and by design. I plan on aerating back there in the Fall when I also plan to top dress and overseed.

But we'll get to that later on. So yeah, game on. We should be in full lawn game mode from this point going forward. From here we're gonna fertilize, we're gonna mow, we're gonna maintain, we're gonna do all that stuff. I keep saying that was my last application of post-emergents: I doubt that. I'm sure I'll have to go through and spot spray when the time comes in the middle of the Summer, but we'll tackle that when the problem arises.

If you want to know more about the products that I used, the pre-emergent, the post-emergent, the backpack sprayer, the marking dye... I'll link all of that in the description box below or click the "i" icon at the top of the screen. So you can go over to DoMyOwn.com and read more about all of that.

And like I always say, if you have any other further questions, if I didn't touch on something or missed something, leave all that in the description box below, Email the Customer Service staff, or pick up the phone and give us a call.

We still have more videos planned for you, so make sure to subscribe to the channel by clicking this button right here. You can click this playlist to see all the videos in the Do My Own Lawn Care series and click this playlist to see all the videos in the Do My Own gardening series.

And just realized the hat's on backwards... Also, thanks for watching.