Aerator For Homeowners

[hazmat]

Hazmat is right, if you just leave them alone, they will eventually decompose and blend in. I bought a lawn sweeper to pick them up, though. It gets the yard looking cleaner much sooner, and you won't trash your mower deck. The plugs went into my compost pile and will be in next year's topdressing material.

If you pick up the plugs with a sweeper, empty the sweeper long before it seems like it is getting full. Don't ask me how I know this.

Jeff - please describe your topdressing method - implements used, qty of compost etc. I've done some research on this but it seems that 1/4 - 1/2" of material is recommended = 30-60+ yards of material per acre (I have 1 acre of lawn). Seems prohibitively expensive & time consuming...

 

[gotcha]

I was thinking about the same thing. What do you do with the plugs though?

It looks like a very large flock of greese landed in your yard and did their thing all over the place and by the way did I mention it feels like also when you walk on them.
The Gotcha Man

 

[jeffinsgf]

Jeff - please describe your topdressing method - implements used, qty of compost etc. I've done some research on this but it seems that 1/4 - 1/2" of material is recommended = 30-60+ yards of material per acre (I have 1 acre of lawn). Seems prohibitively expensive & time consuming...

Expensive? Yes. Time consuming? Depends on your equipment. Worthwhile? If you're the "yard ****" that I am, priceless.

I found a Turfco Mete-R-Matic on eBay a year ago. (see this link: Mete-R-Matic) It was a rusting pile of junk, but Turfco had all the parts I needed and some very helpful folks. I spent a couple weeks on it and ended up with an $8,800 spreader for just over $2,000. With it I can spread a perfect layer of any thickness 5 feet wide. I have used it to topdress the lawn and also to spread chipper chips on paths through my woods.

I topdressed last year (and will again in a few weeks) with MoJava compost (see this link: Springfield Recycling MoJava). It is composted by the city of Springfield and contains yard waste and the coffee grounds from a processing house that makes a coffee candy here. It had a bigger effect on my lawn than any fertilizer I have ever used. I did it right after core aerating. I aerate twice a year, sometimes more, but I can't justify the cost of topdressing more than once a year. When my compost gets ready, I will mix it in with MoJava and save a few bucks.