If you want the look of those beautiful green golf courses, then you will need to have Bermuda grass lawn. But you can’t just plant it and hope that it will turn green and look beautiful all by its self – you will need to take good care of it and learn how to properly maintain your lawn or hire a professional that knows exactly how to properly treat your lawn.
Throughout the year, the soil here in Georgia which is primarily comprised of clay becomes hard packed by frequent lawn mowing foot traffic, hot summer heat and more which makes it difficult for your lawn to absorb all of the nutrients and water necessary to produce a beautiful thick and green lawn.
This is why it’s very important to have your lawn aerated first before applying fertilizer and other lawn treatments. You may have seen lawn care professionals using rolling machines over your neighbor’s lawns which leave little dirt plugs everywhere. This is aerating or aeration. A proper aeration machine will have hollow tines that pull out cores of soil throughout the lawn. This will loosen up the soil, making room for water and fertilizer to soak into the soil and nourish your lawn in turn allowing grass roots to spread out and take hold which will strengthen your lawn making it lush and beautiful.
The best time to aerate your bermuda lawn is in spring to early summer.
Once you have aerated your lawn, you should then treat it with a high quality fertilizer and watered well. If you aren’t sure of which fertilizer to use, be sure to ask a lawn care professional to either show you which type of fertilizer you need and how to apply it or hire a professional lawn care company to take care of this for you on a regular basis.
You may find that your lawn will need of additional grass seeds, after aeration is the perfect time to do add new seed as it will enter into the ground more easily due to the small holes left in your lawn. There will be little dirt plugs over the lawn after aeration. These can be cleared away by raking them into a pile for compost, or simply let them dry for a day or two and then break them up so that the soil can go back into your lawn. They can also simply be left to decompose and return to the lawn on their own which takes about 2 to 4 weeks.