Scarifying or vertimowing lawns is undertaken with a specialised machine to remove a build-up of thatch from a lawn. Over time many lawns, especially those grown in full sun conditions, can begin to have an excess of thatch which is made up of both old and dead stolons, as well as many new stolons. This excess growth can make the lawn feel soft and spongy underfoot, and can result in lawn scalping when mowing is done, whereby the brown thatch layer is regularly cut into, thus resulting in a brown and ugly lawn after mowing, which can then also be more prone to sunburn in hot weather and excessive drying out causing lawn damage.
Excessive lawn thatch is also a problem when much water from regular lawn watering or rain becomes trapped in the thicker thatch layer, which can create two potential issues for us. Firstly is that less water is making its way to the soil and roots of the turf, so the lawn isn’t receiving as much water as it should be from our watering, which instead evaporates away. Next is the issue regarding lawn diseases, which can be encouraged to grow in these perfect moist environments of a thick thatch layer, especially when the weather is warm which makes for a perfectly humid sub-environment for lawn disease to flourish.
Vertimowing, by removing a buildup of thatch will remove potential disease encouragements from our lawn (though not making the lawn by any means immune to disease), it will also ensure a much cleaner finish to our lawns after mowing, with more green leaf and less or no brown thatch layer exposed at all after mowing.
What Is Vertimowing
Vertimowing is done with a machine which in essence runs a series of blades vertically across our lawn, the machine is steered across a lawn surface in a similar manner to a lawn mower, and these blades will cut into and remove a lot of the thatch in a lawn in the process.
Some Australian built vertimowers will in fact be modified versions of commercial cylinder lawn mowers, while other manufacturers may instead build dedicated vertimowing machines which may look somewhat different to a cylinder mower based machine.
Vertimowing can only only be done on warm season grasses which have stolons and rhizomes from which to again regenerate the lawn from. The process will most often be done on aggressive lawn types such as Couch, and sometimes Kikuyu, though may be less necessary on slower growing grasses like Zoysia.
Buffalo grasses are generally not vertimowed at all, as they have no underground runners from which to regenerate the lawn from. Instead these lawns may be better suited to a regular low cut lawn mowing once a year in the Spring to control thatch buildup over the life of the lawn. Lawn coring can also be done on Buffalo lawns as another method to reduce some thatch buildup, though this won’t be as effective as vertimowing.
Once the lawn has been completely vertimowed, we will be left with a lawn surface which is entirely covered over with this removed thatch material, and there will be a lot of it to remove. Probably the easiest way to collect all this refuse is to use a rotary lawn mower with a catcher to pick it all up, though this too will be a job in itself. Another option may be to rake it all up into a pile for disposal. There may be a very good chance that a skip bin or a large trailer may be necessary in order to dispose of all the removed organic matter.
Make no mistake, this is a big job.
Once the vertimowing work has been completed our lawns won’t look much like a lawn at all anymore, but rather may resemble bare soil with some straggly stems growing from it, though this end result does depend entirely on how aggressive the operator is when they vertimow. But rest assured our lawns will grow back again to full health as long as the process was done correctly and with a suitable lawn type.
A lawn fertiliser is often put down onto the turf area after vertimowing to encourage new growth, this would be a granular lawn fertiliser and not a slow release fertiliser in most cases, though each individual vertimowing contractor will have their own preferred methods of operation which may differ to the information here. This may also be a good time to put down wetting agents if our soil is in need of them.
DIY Vertimowing
This work is most often undertaken by contractors, who will complete all the work, remove all the rubbish, fertilise the lawns, and leave the yard clean and tidy when they’re done. It is a big job, and a dirty job, and the workman is entitled to his hard earned wages.
We can do the work ourselves so long as we properly plan out the job in advance. This would include the hiring of the vertimowing machine itself, organising a way to remove the rubbish on the day that may require a skip bin or big trailer to take the waste to the waste transfer station, and it will require tools or the mower to pick up all the rubbish from the lawn. The better part of the day may be required for a larger lawn, or the work may need to be spread out over two days for any of us who are not used to hard physical labour.
Any underground pop-up sprinklers in the lawn should also be clearly marked out before work begins, as it may be possible to smash not only sprinklers but the water pipes underneath the ground too.
DIY vertimowing is more about the amount of labour involved, as well as the costs involved in machine hire and rubbish disposal, than overall skill set, we all could do it without much fuss if we were so inclined.
In the end though the homeowner may wish to consider the costs of machine hire and rubbish disposal with whatever extra costs may be involved in that of just hiring a professional to do the work for us in one go. Sometimes it’s just a better idea to let big jobs like this be handled by a pro.
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