Dethatching Your Lawn – How to Remove Thatch With a Rake

In this lesson, you’ll learn about the importance of dethatching a lawn to keep it looking its best. You’ll also learn a quick and easy method for getting the thatch out of your lawn — and letting the air and moisture in!

If you have grass in your yard, then you probably have thatch as well. Certain grasses are more notorious for thatch buildup, such as St. Augustine and Bermuda. But it can affect any type of grass, to some degree. This layer needs to be removed periodically so air and water can reach the roots. This removal process is referred to as dethatching, and it’s a lawn-care requirement for many homeowners.

Dethatching = Healthier Grass

I’ve been dethatching my St. Augustine lawn for several years now. My neighbor across the street, however, is not “down with the dethatch.” He refuses to worry about it, and even shakes his head when he sees me manually dethatching my lawn each year. In spring in summer, the difference between our lawns is staggering. His is brown and weedy, while mine looks more like a golf course. I’m not saying all of this to brag — I just want you to realize the importance of dethatching your lawn on a regular basis.

Grasses that are prone to thatch buildup include:

• Zoysia
• Bermuda
• St. Augustine
• Kentucky bluegrass
• Other types of “spreading” grasses with broad, thick blades

How do you know if you have thatch in your grass? There’s no mystery to it. You can walk out on your lawn and look straight down toward the roots — you’ll see the thatch buildup, if it’s there. It looks a lot like a brown woven blanket made of straw — that’s the best way I can describe it. Here’s a picture of what it looks like:

What is Thatch Anyway?

Almost every lawn has some level of thatch in it. Of course, if you just had the lawn installed / sodded last year, you won’t have any thatch yet. But aside from that one exception, we all have it to some degree.

So what is thatch and where does it come from? It’s the accumulation of dead grass, leaves, and other plant matter that accumulates at the base of your lawn (just above the soil layer). Over time, it tends to form a cohesive layer, almost like a blanket. This is when it can affect the health of your lawn.

When a thick layer of thatch builds up, it forms a sort of barrier. This limits the amount of rain, air and sunlight that reaches the grass roots. In other words, it keeps your lawn from getting the things it needs to be healthy.

St. Augustine is notorious for having thatch buildup, mainly because the grass blades are so thick. If you mow your lawn infrequently, and let the grass get really tall before cutting it, your thatch problems will be even worse. The freshly cut grass-blades will simply fall onto the lawn and eventually form a thatch layer.

You can reduce the amount of buildup (by cutting your lawn more often, or bagging the grass), but you cannot eliminate it completely. That’s why dethatching your grass is so important. Here’s how to do it.

How to Dethatch a Lawn

The concept behind dethatching is simple. You want to break up the thatch layer and remove it from the lawn. This will increase the amount of air, sunlight, water and nutrients that reach the roots. The result is a healthier and greener lawn. The extended result is a lawn that can resist disease, insects and drought.

So how do you dethatch your lawn effectively? You have two options:

1. The power-engine option: You can buy or rent a dethatching machine, which is sort of like a lawn mower with blades that spin. They look like this
2. The manual option: You can also dethatch the grass manually, using a flexible rake.This is the method I use, since I have a smallish yard.

Which option is right for you? That depends on the size of your yard, more than anything else.

• If you’re working with a large area, like a half-acre or larger, you probably want to go with the first option. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t want to manually rake the thatch from a huge lot. That’s a lot of work.
• If you have a smaller yard, like I do, you can better results by using a flexible rake — the same kind used to rake leaves. It’s certainly a lot cheaper, because you don’t have to buy or rent a machine. You can use a $20 rake to do the job, year after year.

Manually dethatching a lawn is simple, and it doesn’t take as long as you might think. You just rake the lawn using quick, horizontal strokes, and the thatch will rise up to the top. Rake it into a big pile (or several smaller piles across the lawn), and then bag it up. If you have a compost bin, you can put it in there. Otherwise, just toss out the yard bag on trash day.

The key is to rake hard enough … but not too hard. You’re not trying to take up the healthy grass. You’re just trying to get the dead thatchy material to rise up to the surface. My advice is to start on an area that has really bad thatch. These are the areas where you can’t even see the soil beneath the grass, because of the thick layer of brown thatch. When you start raking an area like this, you’ll see how easily the thatch comes up. It literally pops right up from the lawn, with every stroke of the rake.

If you rake over an area, but nothing comes up, then leave that spot alone. There’s not much thatch there. You’ll know when you hit a patch that needs dethatching, because it will come up easily (and in large amounts).

I get the best results when I work in an overlapping ‘V’ pattern. I make a few strokes from my far left toward my feet, and then a couple of strokes from my far right and toward my feet. This seems to pull up the most material with least amount of work. I’ve been doing this for years, so you can learn from my trial and error!