Thatch-her, I hardly know her!

OK, that title sounds a lot funnier out loud than it looks on screen. Today's post is about a little experiment in lawn care. D recently rediscovered the thatcher my parents gave us (he used it last winter to try to spike the ice off the roof, but it has only just now been put to its real purpose). He decided to try to clear out the crud in the front yard. It's full of dried dead-looking brown grass and moss. The living grass looks like it's clinging to life.

At first he thought he could do the whole front yard, but after working a very exhausting hour and two full trash cans, we decided to only do one half and see if we could notice the difference in a few weeks.

D found his rhythm and thatched neat little rows into our lawn. My job (in addition, as usual, to taking pictures, was to scoop the crud into the trash.

The difference quickly became obvious to us, though it's not as clear on camera (and so I'm helping you cheat by drawing in a red dividing line). The thatched area is darker because more dirt is exposed and because a lot of the light brown dead grass is gone. Honestly even with the holes, it already looks healthier.

 Giant clumps of dead grass and moss (the most surprising thing, since our front yard is sunny and south-facing) came out. Theoretically, clearing this away will make room for healthy grass to grow. After we had finished thatching, D spread grass seed and we watered. I am against watering, so we put some down today to help the seed stick to the ground but since it is generally rainy this time of year, we're leaving the seed to fend for itself from here on out.

So just from doing half the front yard (to our front walk in the background), this is the how much dead stuff we pulled from the ground. I was surprised to see that none of the live grass (what little we had) came up, which had been my main concern when we started thatching. Apparently the roots are stronger than we though. Hopefully now that we've given them some breathing room, they'll do even better.

We won't get to the other half of the lawn for a couple of weeks, so it will be interesting to see if we can notice the difference.