Thatch Your Lawn

Benefits of Thatching Your Lawn

Thatching or more appropriately “de-thatching” is the removal of dead grass and moss. Like Aerating, the best time to de-thatch is in the spring during the rainy season. With thatch removed, air, water, nutrients, herbicides and pesticides can do their job more efficiently. Your lawn will become healthier and more resistant to insect damage and disease. De-thatching at regular intervals promotes denser growth and ensures the vibrancy and resiliency of your lawn.

How Do You Know When It’s Time to De-Thatch?

One of the ways to detect thatch is that you will notice your lawn feels very spongy when you walk on it. In the Pacific Northwest moss loves to take over lawns during our mild, moist winters. If you don’t de-thatch your lawn the moss will eventually completely take over. In addition to moss, many lawns also have a layer of thatch, or dead grass lurking just below the surface. If you can’t easily touch the dirt below the grass your lawn needs to be de-thatched. It is this layer of dead grass that prevents your finger – as well as air and water – to penetrate the roots in your lawn.
After we de-thatch your lawn this layer of dead grass and moss will be removed from your lawn, allowing grass seed to penetrate the soil. De-thatching involves two steps: Removing thatch with our de-thatching machine, and then cleaning up the moss and thatch that was lifted from your lawn by our machine. This second step is the most difficult and time consuming because we will usually fill up as many as five bags of very heavy moss debris for each 1,000 sq ft of dethatched lawn. And when I say heavy, I mean it: these bags can weigh as much as 75 pounds each!

This is What a Heavily Moss Covered Lawn Will Look Like After We Dethatch it

Once the moss is raked we can then aerate the lawn, condition the soil, and Hydroseed. After a few weeks of proper watering this lawn will be transformed into a beautiful, renovated lawn that is full of vibrant, healthy, green grass!

Frequently Asked Questions

De-thatching is the removal of dead grass and moss with a power rake machine.

There are many causes for thatch, including: Heavily compacted soil with high clay content, over-watering and over-fertilizing of lawns with poor soil conditions, and frequent shallow roots.

Opyimal Lawn Care Services charges $97 to de-thatch a lawn that is up to 2,000 square feet, and $20 for each additional 500 square feet.

Like aerating, spring and fall is the best time to remove thatch from your lawn, particularly during the cool and wet spring months that can last into June. It is best to dethatch during the spring because the lawn can quickly rejuvenate itself due to the ideal growing conditions that spring weather provides in the Pacific Northwest.

Yes, we work in the rain. The only exception is if we are having extremely heavy rain as this can damage the lawn. If this is the case we will wait for the lawn to dry out for a day or two once the heavy rain stops. However, light to moderate rainy conditions will not prevent us from doing lawn renovation work.

In addition to de-thatching there are other services that we provide, including aerating, applying moss killer, fertilizer, and seed.