Battling Thatch

I did end up power raking after I aerated my lawn. Steve Sagaser, from NDSU Extension, pointed out that it would be good since it breaks up the plugs that are pulled out as part of the aeration process. In addition I did seem to have quite a bit of thatch, even though I did power rake last year and you probably shouldn't have to do it every year. Anyway, the standard is if you have a 1/2 inch of thatch, you should power rake. That seems kind of hard to measure or at least hard to determine if you are doing it right. I just stuck the ruler in the ground until I hit dirt and as you can see from the picture above it appears that I did have more than a 1/2 inch. Steve also suggested that he could tell earlier this year that the yard had a spongy feel to it.

Here's that video clip.


This is what it looked like before I raked. I meant to take a picture after, but apparently I forgot because it's not in my camera! Anyway, my friend Kevin helped me pick up the rental rake from Hardware Hank in EGF (I needed to borrow his pickup) and he stuck around and helped me rake up the bag upon bag of thatch that was pulled up. Thank you Kevin! I did pay him back with steaks from the grill for him and his girlfriend.

I always expect that you'll see black dirt when you're done, but you definitely still see brown. I know that a lot came up, though, because we bagged plenty of it.

So now, most of the labor intensive stuff is done. I aerated, power-raked and fertilized-in that order. I've also over seeded a dead spot in my backyard and another spot where I used Roundup to kill off some rough fescue that didn't match the rest of the lawn. On Thursday's Turf Tips, I'll show you how that planting process went and let you know if any seedlings have popped up yet. With all this rain we've been getting, I'm hoping to see good growth soon.