The Core Aeration Myth

From the dawn of time, everyone from golf course supers, sports field managers, and lawn care operators has been told that the only way to reduce soil compaction is by mechanical aeration. The reasoning is that pulling plugs out of the ground is the only way to get water, air, and nutrients down into hard soils. Also, removing soil in the form of plugs will allow room for the roots of the grass to more easily penetrate farther down into the soil.

To understand the truth, one needs to know the root cause of soil compaction. By definition, soil compaction is the breakdown of soil structure. Good soil structure consists of individual soil particles that have combined to make larger soil aggregates. When soil is well-aggregated, pore space exists between the aggregates, allowing water, air, nutrients, and roots to penetrate the soil.

A good visual example of well-aggregated soil is jar full of marbles, with the marbles being the soil aggregates and the space between them being the pore space that enables the penetration of air, water, nutrients and roots. In contrast to the jar full of marbles, compacted soil resembles a jar full of sugar, where the aggregates are broken down in to individual particles resulting in an absence of pore space.

The myth of mechanical aeration is based on the false pretense that the removal of small plugs of soil will change the soil structure. In reality, this provides a very temporary and minor relief of soil compaction, due to the fact that mechanical aeration has been found to affect only 3-5% of a given area. View the complete report here.

SoilTech resolves the two major faults of mechanical aeration – soil structure and coverage.

1. When applied to compacted soils, SoilTech reverses & prevents the breakdown of soil aggregates by forcing individual soil particles to re-aggregate through the charges in the polymer itself. Think of SoilTech as a flocculent, changing the jar full of sugar back in to a jar full of marbles.

2. SoilTech is a liquid that is applied to an entire area. 100% of the area will be affected by the product, as opposed to only 3-5%. This greatly increases the effectiveness of SoilTech over traditional mechanical aeration. Read a more detailed explanation of how SoilTech works here.

While mechanical aeration does have its place in agronomy for treating certain situations, when it comes to correcting the true problem of soil compaction it is a long standing myth and SoilTech is the truth.