The core aerator weighed about 200 pounds, and the guy at the Home Depot rental counter said that like it was a feature. Gary and I walked it up a pair of ramps into the Tacoma on Saturday morning, August 29, and I spent the next four hours learning what it's like to be dragged around your own front yard by a machine.
Why the front lawn needed help
Our front lawn is small, and by this summer it was thin in all the predictable places. The city plow scraped up a strip along the street last winter. The grass along the driveway edge was salt-burned. And there's a hard, bare path across one corner where the mail carrier cuts through, which I've decided not to take personally.
Everything I read, and Gary, agreed that late August into early September is the time to seed a lawn around here. The soil is still warm, the nights are getting cooler, weeds are slowing down and there are a good six weeks before frost. Aerating first pulls plugs of soil out of the ground, so the seed has somewhere to land besides hardpan.
I watered the yard Thursday and Friday so the tines would pull clean cores instead of bouncing. I also put flags along the route of the Xfinity line across the front yard, because cable lines are often buried shallow and the tines go down about three inches. I steered around the flags the whole way.
Four hours with a heavy machine
The rental was $95 for four hours. I ran the front lawn twice, the second pass at an angle to the first, until the yard was covered in little soil plugs that look exactly like what you're thinking. With an hour left on the clock, I ran it over the worn path in the backyard too. Turning was the hardest part. You lift the tines, haul the back end around and hope you're lined up for the next pass, and my shoulders filed a complaint that lasted until Tuesday.
Seed, a spreader and one mistake
The seed was a 10-pound bag of sun-and-shade mix for $72. I borrowed Gary's broadcast spreader, which he handed over with instructions I only half heard. That was the mistake. I set it too open, and by the time I'd covered the first half of the yard I'd used about six pounds. The second half got the remaining four, spread as evenly as I could manage. You can already see the difference: the street side is thick and the side near the house is patchy. That's a spring touch-up.
I skipped starter fertilizer. Partly it was cost, and partly I couldn't get a straight answer on what our soil needs without a soil test, which is now on the list. After seeding I raked lightly to work the seed into the holes and left the cores to break down on their own.
The watering schedule, and the dog
We already had a hose timer from the raised beds, so the sprinkler runs three times a day for ten minutes: early morning, noon and late afternoon. The goal for the first couple of weeks is to keep the top half inch damp, not to soak it. Once the grass is up and growing, I'll switch to longer, less frequent watering. Our water bill was $94 in July, and I fully expect September's to be higher, which I wrote down ahead of time so it doesn't surprise me.
Seven days in, there's a green fuzz across most of the yard, the ryegrass in the mix coming up first. The rest should fill in over the next couple of weeks. The whole job came to $167: $95 for the aerator and $72 for the seed.
The hard part has been Moose. His walks have always started out the front door and straight across the lawn to the sidewalk. Now there's string around the yard, and he has to go out the side door and down the driveway like a delivery driver. Every morning he stops at the string, looks at the lawn, then looks at me like I personally moved the sidewalk.
