Aeration Time of Year: Is Aeration Better in Spring or Fall?

While the benefits of lawn aeration have been proven in many different parts of the country, it still isn’t a practice that is embraced by every lawn care company out there. Reasons that are given include,

• Lack of demand.
• Lack of time to schedule and perform the service.
• Resistance to the true utility ie they don’t think it works.

If your lawn contractor isn’t aerating, you are missing out on an opportunity to increase the quality of your turf and possibly reduce lawn maintenance costs over time.   

Fall or Spring Aeration: Which Time of Year is Better?

Conventional wisdom has been that fall aeration helps more with cool season turf, while spring is the season for aerating warm season turf. In reality, aeration can be beneficial when performed in either season, or both if you have severely compacted soil. Integrating it as a part of an environment-first lawn schedule, aeration provides benefits in all types of turf and a majority of customers see improvement within a month in lawn color, thatch density and nutrient uptake.

Another consideration is whether you need to promote root growth or need more color in the blades. Fall aeration will build the roots over the winter when lawn is dormant. This is because air and nutrients settle in to the root area and are not quickly drawn into the blades.  A spring aeration will release nutrients into the root zone but since the lawn is rapidly growing in early spring, the nutrients will quickly be pulled from the roots since the photosynthesis process is most robust at the beginning of the season.

Learn more about our aeration pricing.