YardSmart

Dave Barry's Lawn Lament

Comedian Dave Barry once lamented, "I have, over the years learned a few basic facts about lawn care, the two major ones being: If you fail to feed, fertilize, and water your lawn, it will die. If you feed, fertilize, and water your lawn, it will die."

His damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't statement actually points to a very important truth about lawns. It relates to the condition of the soil. If the soil contains clay, it can, over time, become as dense as a brick. Try growing lawn on a brick and you'll get the point. The brick is so dense neither roots nor water nor fertilizer can penetrate the surface. Lawns like Barry's, struggling to grow in heavily compacted soil, may fail to thrive or die out no matter how much water and fertilizer you give them.

Clay soil contains the smallest particles, which is why it makes such good pottery. When you shape it, clay stays shaped. When you compact it from years of kids and cars using the lawn for outdoor living, it can literally turn into a brick.

Sometimes your lawn's soil isn't the same at every spot. Some areas may have natural zones of more dense clay than others. Places that experience more traffic may suffer a greater rate of compaction, too. This explains why lawns can have perpetually balding spots that won't go away. Some of the worst offenders are strips adjacent to driveways that suffer inaccurate parking, particularly in the winter when there's snow. And corners cut by kids with bikes or maybe a short cut to the sidewalk can result in a compacted trail.

If you think your lawn may be too compacted, turn on the sprinklers and see how quickly the water runs off. Compacted lawns are notoriously slow to absorb water, so the vast majority of what you apply stands on the surface and never reaches the grass roots. This unnecessary waste of resources also interferes with getting fertilizer to the roots because it's carried there by water.

Aerating your lawn is the best way to fight compaction. You can rent a machine that extracts plugs about the size of a large lipstick at regular intervals over the lawn surface. It's hard to overdo this because each hole will become an expressway for water and water carried fertilizer.

With the holes open you can apply a top dressing to the lawn. You can buy bagged materials specifically designed as a lawn topper or you can use regular bagged compost for the job. Apply material about an inch deep over the entire lawn. Then rake the compost in well so that it is forced into the holes to prevent them from caving in. The holes become miniature sumps that fill with water, allowing it to slowly be absorbed into the surrounding soil.

After you aerate and top-dress the old lawn, reseed it to increase the density of the grass. The grass seed will lodge in the little sumps, where there is room for roots and plenty of moisture.

You can do the same thing on a smaller scale for isolated islands of compacted soil. Use a spading fork or buy a hand operated aerating tool to create the holes. The tool has tines similar to the machine, but you have to press them into the lawn with your foot over and over until the area is well perforated. Then top-dress and over-seed to help the bald spot fill in more quickly. And keep kids and cars and dogs off until it does!

You can spend every weekend slaving over your lawn, but if the soil is compacted you won't get the results your after. Dave Barry's lament could be yours as well. If you have any question, you can go out to the lawn and try to stick a sharpened pencil into the soil. If it breaks before it penetrates, then soil compaction is the culprit. And aerating that lawn may be your only way back.

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