This is my running log of everything I’ve done to my lawn in the 2020 growing season.
February 2020
In late February I started cleaning up the yard from winter debris like old leaves and pine needles. After raking it all up I then decided to try to thicken up some areas that didn’t grow vigorously last year. I took a thatch rake and raked out a lot of debris from the East facing side yard and then sprinkled the area heavy. A few days later I took a manual core aerating tool and punched about 1500 cores into the area and then mowed the whole area down to the lowest setting to break up a bit of the cores. I stopped short of fertilizing the area because the grass wasn’t really growing yet. I plan on throwing down my first fertilizer in that area in early April as our average soil temps are sill in the low 40s.