Earlier this week I dethatched my lawn. I used the Greenworks Dethatcher. It does a great job of bringing up a lot of dead material. If you’d like to know more about dethatching and its benefits, read my post on how to dethatch your lawn.
Dethacthing Prep
Before I began to dethatch my lawn, I lowered my height of cut from 3.25″ to 2″. My mower couldn’t handle the drastic change so I had to cut my lawn twice, once at 2.75″ and another at 2″. A lower height of cut allows the dethatcher to really get down to the soil to get all of that thatch out. This is also good to do if you are overseeding. The drastic change in height of cut will temporarily stun the existing grass, allowing the new seedlings to catch up and not get shaded by the taller grass.
Time To Dethatch My Lawn
This year I decided to double-dethatch. I ran the machine in 2 different directions (east-west then north-south) which meant, double the work! After each time, I had to clean up the thatch with my mower. The reason I double-dethatched was because my lawn was beginning to feel “spongy”. Sure enough, each dethatch pass brought up a lot of dead grass.
Dethatching Prior To Overseed
Another reason why I was more aggressive with dethatching was because I also planned to overseed my lawn. With all of that dead material gone, there was more space for good seed to soil contact. Generally though, I normally just dethatch in one direction. Sometimes going too aggressive can damage the grass roots. After dethatching and overseeding, I gave my lawn a good watering.
This is all for now. Sadly I won’t be mowing for about 2 weeks to let the new seed catch up to the existing grass. I’ll make another post at that time.
