in this video we're going to be looking at three ways that you can scarify your lawn
and it will really fit with anyone's budget i'm
going to be giving you an overview of the manual scarification method
a powered machine
and also a lawnmower which has got a built-in cassette system i'm also going to be discussing
the pros and cons for each of the types of methods and finally i'm going to be doing an example pass
with each of the different machines so you can see the type of results you might get and what
you can expect from using each type of method let's first talk about what is scarification
now scarification is the process of raking out all of the dead matter that sits inside
the lawn and what this is going to do is it's going to help the lawn breathe it's going to
prepare the surface especially if you want to over seed or fertilize and if you think about
it thatch that's built up underneath the grass surface when you drop in seeds and fertilizer
on there if any of it's sitting on that thatch layer it's not going to get down into the roots
of the plant and you're going to not get the most value for money from your fertilizers
and you're not going to get the same germination quality from your seeds the best times of year to
scarify the lawn are in spring and autumn and the reason for this is the grass is actively growing
when the grass is actively growing it means it can quickly push up through the ground and repair
itself from any of the processes that we use to scarify the lawn so first up we're going to be
looking at method one which is a manual method now manual garden tools have been around for
years and years and they're readily available in most garden centers and online shops
you can get more specialist scarifying tools like this scarify rake here which has got these
fixed blades which are going to tear through the thatch in your lawn and help it breathe
you can also use more general garden rakes and a fixed garden rake is going to give you a more
aggressive finish and a spring tine rake is going to give you a more softer finish some of the pros
about using manual garden tools are they're really readily available you can pick them up from garden
centers or online stores or even some secondary marketplaces and they're quite cheap so in terms
of cost this is the most affordable option but generally user manual tools they're cheap
cost effective and great for small areas so let's have a go at using the manual rake and see what we
get up to a tool like this with a nice long handle is going to be much easier on your back
and i'm six foot two and i've got no issues with using this
i'm just working the low and backwards and forwards
picking out any of the dead matter
so we can see just from that little path of a couple of meters we've got all this thatch which
is smothering the lawn and it's going to prevent and reduce the effectivity of our fertilizers
another good thing about scarifying is it can help you to pull out some weed type grasses
these will be grasses that we don't really want
in our lawn and they're annual grasses with these little seed heads on the top
these grasses are more coarse they don't look as fine and they can be a much lighter colour so if
you have got these type of grasses in in place in your lawn scarifying won't completely remove
them but raking them out especially when it's dry these grasses have got shallow root systems
and they do not like dry weather this particular april has been really really dry so as i'm raking
it i'm pulling out loads of these weed grasses which is great for when i overseed to give me
a better quality lawn so let's get cracking with method number two so i've left some of the
debris on the lawn on this side so you can see the results of method number one which is the manual
method and method number two is going to be around a dedicated scarifier unit now there are different
types of units you can get the professional units are obviously much more heavy duty tend to be
powered by petrol and although there are some good battery operated ones coming onto the market now
and they will be a lot more expensive this video is really designed for the homeowner so i'm
going to be focusing on more of a homeowner type machine which is a plug-in scarifier
that means a unit similar to this so if we take a look at what's going on underneath and you can
see how this machine works and it's going to rip up thatch from the lawn
so underneath underneath this machine um there's not a lot going on underneath there really
you've got this little hatch which fits a grass box onto the back and you've got this springtime
system these machines tend to come with two cartridges there's a scarification type of
raking cartridge which is this one or there's a more heavy what they call aerator cartridge
which is got solid tines and blades you can see this piece of equipment is
the aerating cartridge and it isn't a plug aerator it's a slitting type of
aerator that's going to make little marks in the soil surface which can help with
water penetration and also rip up some thatch so generally how i'm thinking about these things is
for sort of ongoing maintenance where a lawn is up to a relatively high standard i generally
use this type of raking system if i want a more aggressive and deep scarification where there's
lots of thatch i'm going to be using something like this there's also a little height adjustment
on the side of here where you can set the depth of these blades which is quite good because you
might want to vary it depending on how aggressive you want to be in your lawn and if you're in doubt
start a high setting do a pass take a look what it looks like and then you can decide whether
you want to take more or less off if you're interested in purchasing a machine like this
i've left an affiliate link in the description below i purchased this machine off amazon around
two years ago and i think it's a brilliant little machine for a small to medium sized garden and
great for a domestic user it does the trick and i use it as part of my renovations year on year
some of the pros are using this type of unit is it's quite small and compact this means it
can go at the back of the shed uh it stores very easily and for this particular unit the handles
fall down and collapse into quite a compact little bit of space it is slightly more expensive
than the manual system but it's also in the middle ground for price in relation to a full cassette
system or a professional unit and if you've got a severely severely heavily thatched lawn you might
want to consider it different options there's lots of good professional lawn care companies who can
raise that standard of your loan for you and maybe keep an ongoing maintenance with a unit like this
so with all that being said let's do a pass with this unit and see how we get on
might be difficult to tell on the camera but the powered method has removed more material
along this straight significantly quicker this means i'm going to be able to do multiple passes
in different directions in half the time and it's going to be a lot less manual work
the last method i'm going to be looking at is a full cassette lawnmower system now there's
a number of different types of mowers that have this capability and this particular model is the
swardman electra and this model has been given to me on loan as a demo unit from gardeninports.co.uk
i haven't been paid for making this video so all the results you'll see are the real deal but i
thought i'd use it as a third method just to give you a flavor of what this type of system can do
now what a cassette system lawn mower is is basically the main body of the mower
is the same but you can get different blades of interchangeable cartridges that fit inside this
machine this gives it a huge amount of versatility for different types of jobs from brushing to
vertical in and scarifying and obviously mowing the lawn now some of the cons about using a system
like this is the upfront cost you will have to pay for the main body unit itself and the different
cassettes so there is a higher outlay generally to have the infrastructure to be able to switch the
cartridge system around in terms of the pros this system is mainly designed for lawn enthusiasts
who really want to take their lawn to the next level you get a high range of interchangeability
and a lot of flexibility for one tool that can do many different jobs in the lawn so
with that being said let's load the cartridge into the machine and see what we're looking at
before i put the cartridge into the machine i just want to say
if you've got any questions about this video please leave them in the comments section
below and consider liking and subscribing to my channel the garden lawn care guy
so here's an example of the mowing blade and this mowing blade rotates
these cylinders against this little bed knife at the bottom i've just taken this
cassette out of the machine because we're going to load in the scarifying unit and give it a whirl
uh
so so you can see that type of machine is actually throwing the debris out forward now that's going
to give it a bit of a cleaner path as it runs and actually it can be a bit easier to tidy up
some of the machines that fire the debris out backwards tend to fill up the grass boxes really
really quick and you end up taking them off and just letting the debris pile up on the lawn
on a small garden when i'm using the cassette type system i found it throws the debris
forward and leaves it in a nice little pile for me at the end of my strip which i think is pretty
handy and one of the other things to think about is when using that type of machine it's
generally either going to be a petrol machine or a battery machine and what that means is no cables
so you're going to be looking to use that on small medium or large type of lawns because when you've
got a cable you can be restricted in terms of the area of coverage that you can cover the petrol
machines will obviously run for a really long time and some of the battery machines have got
fantastic distances one to two thousand square meters plus so it gives you a lot more freedom
without a cord so overall those cassette type of systems can have a higher upfront cost to purchase
they offer a lot more flexibility and they don't have the constraints of using a cord so overall
in terms of which methods best really depends on what your goals are and what your budget is
there's a method for everybody in there and if you want to get a quick job on a small area
perhaps the manual method is good for you if you've got a small to medium sized lawn
and you don't have a constraint for space perhaps the powered unit and if you're really
looking to take your lawn to the next level and have all the right tools and equipment to
maintain your lawn on a frequent basis then the cassette system could be ideal
also if you've got a larger area the cassette type system petrol or electric models are really
good to cover those distances so the next part of the video i'm actually going to finish up
the lawn using the powered machine because i think that's most representative of what people will use
in real terms so right now i'm going to finish up doing the lawn with the powered machine because i
think that's most representative of what people will be using at home now for those of you who
just wanted the information from this video then thanks a lot for watching please like the video
don't forget to subscribe in the next video i'm going to be covering fertilization and different
fertilizers on this lawn so if you're interested in that turn the notification bells on which will
alert you for the next video and for those of you who are interested on seeing the final results
i'm going to do a quick pass with the manual machine just so you can see how that looks
so this is going to give you an indication of type of stuff that's coming out
we've actually got loads of this annual meadow grass in there which is great
we've got some moss that's getting pulled out and as i said before the annual meadow grass
has got really shallow roots so it's just getting ripped out with this dry weather