1. Determine if your lawn needs to be dethatched. Power lawn scarifiers stressful for your lawn and should be used only when necessary. Take a sample of grass and soil and measure the spongy thatch layer in between which is constructed with organic materials such as grass, pine needles, leaves and roots. You can see different areas to test, since the structure may vary. If it's an inch deep, to think about dethatching soon. It 's definitely needed when it comes to ainches or more.
2. Decide whether to rent or borrow a power aerator or hire a professional to do it for you. Lawn scarifiers seeking some sort of power lawn mowers, but they are usually much heavier and have different positions in vertical straw to cut without damaging the grass. Because you want the height of the blade and the right distance, it can be a bit 'difficult to use if you're not used to them. You should be able to do in a lawn of a typical half-day rental period, the costsabout $ 60-80 dollars or about $ 100 - $ 125 for 8 hours if you have a bigger lawn.
3. Dethatch plan at the right time. You do not want the soil too dry or too wet. Because it's hard on the grass, they need time to recover, at least two or three weeks of active growing season before the weather is too hot or too cold and dry. Typically, early spring or autumn are the best.
4. Prep your lawn and pick up other equipment for lawn maintenance. You want to mow the lawn about half of thenormal height. If you want to seed (really a good idea), fertilizer (a good idea) and / or topdress (not required but an advantage in many fields and a great help even out), these materials available.
5. Set-up of Thatcher. If you go to take the lawn Thatcher, rental center helps blade height or distance. Herbs for hot weather, the height to cut the grass with about ½ inch blades 1-2 cm away. From herbs low temperatures are more subtle,blade spacing may be increased to 3 cm and the height can be adjusted by ¼ inch. If dethatching, you can read changes when necessary.
6. Go over each area more than once. For the best coverage and results, doing more cross pattern in each area. Consider using a manual dethatching rake angles and get extra moss.