Dethatching the Lawn

I’m thinking about dethatching the lawn. Maybe buy one at Home Depot or something. To pull behind my riding lawn tractor. I cut maybe 1.5 to 2 acres.

Is this a decent time to do it? As long as the ground isn’t too wet? I’m on sandy soil and it seems like it could take a good raking right now.

Any other tips or tricks?

i’m no lawn expert but i think its to early…….been told you should wait till it starts greening up!!!!!

for the record i dont thatch my lawn……i was also told the old grass helps keep moisture in and is a form of fertilizer as it decays!!!

i’m no lawn expert but i think its to early…….been told you should wait till it starts greening up!!!!!

2nd that!!! heard the same here

Roger I will take that into consideration. My grass has just started to green up. But it’s gonna be cold this weekend.

I’ve never dethatched a lawn either. But I think it would help my current lawn. I have some areas that really look good it I give it an aggressive manual rake. Lots of small sticks and pine cones and other debris kinda seems to be suffocating some areas. But I have too much to do by hand.

It needs to start to green up. Not necessarily the whole yard needs to be green. I always thatched in the morning on a sunny day, then leave it dry out, and finally bag it.
Currently no need to thatch because yard is too new.

I did mine last week b4 the rain. I had the time then. And looked terrible. Ran over the mole runs which I trapped out a couple days before.
I’ve done it late and early. Would rather do early. A little snow after I did it. I put down some grass seed and fertilizer b4 the snow..
I just have a little 2 footer that digs up stuff then a lawn sweeper after that. Amazing how many loads I had with the sweeper.
Looks darn nice now

I did it once and I’ll never do it again.
The yard looked terrible for at least a year.
Not sure it’s ever fully recovered.
It has never looked as good as it did before dethatching.

It’s way to early. The ground need to firm up or you will set the roots back. The ground needs to warm up and firm up or you will pull the roots of the grass loose.

I usually shoot for a nice dry stretch close to May 1. Let the roots take hold more as things start to really green up. If you do it now you’re way more likely to damage grass than help it

i have several neighbors that i would call “anal” about there lawns and none of them have done there’s yet. and i have not seen any of these lawn care guys out and about thatching lawns as of yet.

of course at the moment we still have agood blanket of snow covering most lawns!!!!

Sounds like I should wait a bit.

But there is some descrepancy (in my mind) between dethatching, power raking. At minimum I know my lawn could use a good raking.

The one I was looking at has tines not blades. More similar to a rake

Dethatchers have tines,
Aerators have spikes or coring tubes.

Thanks. I was out there raking today. My lawn is ready for a good aggressive rake. I need to get some air down to the soil, I can tell too much debris is suffocating the grass.

So either I’ll keep working my azz of with a manual regular rake and do sections at a time. Or get brave enough to get a contraption to pull behind the rider, lol.

I used to use a detaching blade on my walk behind mower. It looked like a blade but wasn’t sharp. I had a tine sticking down on each end. Tore the grass up and looked like hell. For the loose grass, I’d rake or pick up with my rider/bagger. Grew back fine.

I dethached a couple of years ago and it did wonders for my lawn. It was like walking on a sponge my yard was so soft with dead grass. I’ll be doing it again this year as my backyard is right back to where you feel like you’ve got moon shoes on when you’re tromping around. The general rule through the research I had done was wait until the soil is a consistent 60 degrees. I purchased a greenworks electric unit from Amazon and it did everything I had hoped it would do. I wouldn’t use it on anything over a half acre because you’d be at it all day but for my quarter acre it certainly got the job done.

I have a commercial zero turn with a JRCO “rake” I use in the spring. It’s actually referred to as a “tine rake”. I pull a powerful vac behind to pickup the debris. IMO, it’s still too early…no way I’d be doing this right now but a week from now, quite possibly. One thing to remember is once you apply pre-emergent crab preventer, you don’t want to rake or otherwise disturb the turf. Right now in Henderson MN,(closest readings to me) ground temps are still in the 30s and yesterday hit 41 degrees. It’s likely I’ll be doing the “tine raking” sometime next week and then thinking about getting pre-emergent down after.

I am probably not dethatching this year. I will however core aerate. I havent done that in a number of years and should be doing it every year if not twice per year. I have also stopped bagging my lawn. It seems to be healthier now then when I did. I do have a mulching attachment that shreds things up really well vs just throwing clipping all over the place in piles like before.

FYI those pull behind dethatches do not do a very good job. I have a John Deere tractor with a John Deere pull behind and use my Electric Sun Joe instead. Neighbor has same tractor and has a front mounted John Deere dethatcher and his does wonders 100% better then the pull behind.

I’ll also add a little thatch is actually beneficial…a little. More than 1/2″ is problematic and then it’s time to deal with it.

I rake my yard so much, de-thatching is unnecessary. I am about to give it a gentle raking just to clean up the winter mess then lay down the crabb grass preventer.

Good info for me. Thank you.

I am going to put down crabgrass preventer as well. Guessing a couple weeks yet for my location on that.