Knowing when your lawn needs dethatching is one of the tips for maintaining a healthier lush of green. When done correctly, dethatching can be a transforming activity to a more attractive lawn. However, you’ll have to choose the ideal time to dethatch your lawn since this process is tough on lawns and can be a total disaster when the timing is wrong.
If you are wondering why your lawn is weak even after many regular fertilizing and watering efforts, then probably the thatch layer of your lawn is thicker than the ideal. Dethatching will come in handy with making your turf of green stronger and teeming.
What Is Thatch Anyway?
Thatch is an organic layer between the grass blades and the roots in lawns. It is composed of both living and dead grass blades, stems, and roots. In an ideal amount, the thatch benefits your lawn by improving drainage and moisture retention capacities.
Causes of Thatch
Thatch occurs naturally in any lawn, but the rate at which it develops is affected by the type of grass and how lawn owners manage their lawns.
Activities like over-fertilizing cause excess thatch, extra watering, mowing the grass too high, heavily compact soil, and over-spraying pesticides and fungicides on lawns.
Dethatching
If the thatch layer in your lawn becomes thicker than ideal, it’s harmful and results in weaker and unhealthy lawns. Excessive thatch results in many lawn problems:
- Blocks water from reaching the grassroots
- Prevents sunlight from reaching the grass blades
- It provides ideal grounds for fungi survival, which may lead to mushrooms in your lawn. That pesky site on your lawn!
- Retains excess moisture that promotes lawn diseases
- Prevents air circulation
- Prevents nutrients and fertilizers from reaching the soil
- Hinders root growth
Removing the thick thatch layer from a lawn is known as dethatching. You should initiate this process whenever thatch accumulation exceeds half an inch.
How to Know When to Dethatch Your Lawn
Thatch that is more than half an inch thick is terrible for your grass. You should regularly check the thickness of the thatch layer in your lawn to determine whether or not your lawn needs dethatching.
If the thatch is more than half an inch, then dethatching will work best for your lawn. Besides, the process will maximize the ideal conditions of grass thriving and make your lawn more attractive.
You should closely examine your lawn even if it looks healthy. Thatch build-up comes without warning, and by the time you realize it, your lawn has excess thatch.
Are you wondering how to know when to dethatch your lawn?
Check the Sponginess of the Thatch
1. Walk on Your Lawn to Fell Its Firmness or Sponginess
If you are looking for an easy way to determine whether your lawn needs dethatching, this is your best option. Walking on the lawn for a while helps you feel your thatch. Besides, you can even walk barefoot to help you get a more precise feeling.
If the ground feels firm when walking on your lawn, then the thatch layer is of the right thickness, but if you get a spongy or bouncy feeling on your feet, the thatch layer is thicker than half an inch, and your lawn needs dethatching.
2. Use Your Hand to Press the Lawn
It’s a fact that hands are more sensitive. Pressing your lawn with your hand will give you a more accurate feeling of sponginess or firmness than your bare feet.
Pressing the grass blades with your hand helps you judge the firmness of your lawn. If your lawn feels firm, then the thatch is not excessively grown, but if your lawn feels spongy on your hands and you can even push down further after reaching the end of the grass blades, the thatch layer is thick, and your lawn needs dethatching.
3. Use Your Finger or a Ruler to Measure the Thickness of your Thatch Layer
Push your finger through the thatch and observe how deep it goes. If the thatch is half an inch or less, your lawn is in the best condition, but if it’s more than half an inch, then you’ll need to dethatch.
You can also use a stick or even use a ruler directly if you don’t like the idea of penetrating your finger through the thatch.
4. Examine Turf Plug from Your Lawn
Testing a turf wedge by looking at its side view and measuring the thatch layer’s length is another easy and quick way to know when to dethatch your lawn. To do this, you’ll have to:
A. Get a Spade or Shovel
The tools will help you remove a chunk of grass, thatch, and roots from the lawn. You can even use a trowel to extract the piece from your lawn.
B. Dig Out A Turf Wedge from Your Lawn
Work the spade or shovel deep onto the soil level of your lawn and remove a chunk. Ensure that the turf wedge is deep below the thatch to the soil layer for accuracy of measurement, but you don’t have to dig up a big chunk; a small one is just enough for this test.
Work the trowel into the chunk and cut out a plug, ensuring it’s deep enough to the soil level then pull it out.
C. Measure the Thatch Layer Using a Ruler
You should measure the thickness of the thatch using a ruler or a tape measure. The thatch appears as a distinct layer of brown material that is spongy. If you find out that the thatch is thicker than half an inch, then you need to dethatch.
It’s worth doing this test at distinct sections for large lawns to determine which areas need dethatching. You don’t want to waste time dethatching your entire lawn when it’s just a section of it that has excess thatch.
Other Signs That Your Lawn Needs Dethatching
- Brown patches on your lawn
- Frequent lawn diseases
- Lawn insect infestation
- Generally stressed lawn
Even with all these tips to knowing when to dethatch your lawn, you’ll need to do it at the ideal time. Knowing when to dethatch a lawn increases the chances of recovery to a healthier and teeming lawn.
Ideal Time for Dethatching
You should ensure you remove thatch from your lawn at least once annually. Most lawn owners prefer to dethatch in late March, early April, or when the grass growing season ends in late September.
Nevertheless, you should initiate thatch removal when the weather condition is ideal for supporting the grass’s swift growth and recovery.
Early fall is also ideal for lawn dethatching and works best for most lawns. Besides, the growth pattern of your grass determines when to dethatch your lawn.
For grasses like Bermuda and Zoysia, which thrive well on the warm season, dethatching in early summer or the late spring matches their rapidly growing season.
Grasses like Kentucky bluegrass and Fescue thrive well in the cold season. If you have this type of grass in your lawn, dethatching in early fall, late summer, or spring matches their rapidly growing season.
You should consider the state of the turf before determining when to remove thatch. Dethatching a weak lawn does more harm than good since the lawn has lower chances of recovery.
Generally, the grass should have about one and a half months of rapid growth conditions after thatch removal to maximize the recovery and prevent weeds from taking over your lawn.
