Completed the first step in my lawn renovation and it sucked. The Sunjoe dethatcher worked pretty good and was the easy part of the job. The raking and bagging was a chore. This is from a roughly 5,500sqft yard. Large sections were mostly weeds that I treated with glyphosate almost 2 weeks ago. With me focusing on renovating the inside of my house all year (2 bathrooms, new flooring and a nursery) I have let my lawn just go to ruin. I’m in southern Ohio and planning to get seed down in 2-3 days. Hoping we actually get a fall and have time for the grass to establish.
by Der_Bazzle
39 Comments
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This is the right time to use a dethatcher. Lawn Reno! Good luck to you sir.
Burn it
The 1st time I dethatched my lawn after I moved into my place I was awarded with 6 lawn and leaf 30 gallon bags for 1500 sq ft… I don’t know where it all came from. I just dethatched yesterday, and I was able to just add the ~ 1.5 bag volume to my mulch pile. I’m in zone 7b and ~6 weeks from first frost, hope I have enough time for the overseeding to stick. Good luck with your lawn reno!
Great job getting through it without throwing your back out.
May you have days that are half sunny and half rainy this reseeding season.
Did mine today too. 25 55 gallon trash bags of thatch shed cut grass. Luckily have a few farms around the area that love getting grass for their compost heaps
You think this is bad, wait till you try rethatching.
I have used my mower with the bagger on to pickup the thatch. Far easier than taking it all up. IMO
My problem is…. My ego mower doesn’t suck …..did like 4 passes …. And still some left
Edit: Im gonna wait for a Lawn sweeper at clearance price for next year, saw some vids showing pretty good efficiency, wayyyyy better than raking haha
It does. I did it just 1 time and felt the effort wasn’t worth it. I also had more weeds the following year….which could have been user error, but I’m still blaming the dethatching.
Did this exact work in Cincinnati two weeks ago. Thought I might not survive.
Glad I don’t know what that is to care. Lol
What do you do with your bags of grass? My sanitation department won’t take them.
I had a corner lot once…never again.
Keep lurking around this community and you will learn all about it! I didn’t even know what this was before I joined this community.
Aye north east Ohio here. I feel like I need to detach mine as well, very flat and brown
I just toss it in the compost pile for next year’s garden and beds
Is that a ‘16 STI?
I actually enjoy doing my yard, I have a pull behind dethatcher and then I go around with a pull behind sweeper And just dump it in the back corner of my yard in a compost pile.
Bro. I need to invest in a dethather. I was gonna get a battery powered but if you saying the sun Joe was enough. I’ll get that because I tried to manual with a rake and almost died.
What an absolute waste of resources.
If you have bermuda: no need to dethatch.
When you see the results 2 weeks later, dethatching is actually satisfying. Cleanup is was sucks. I had a bigger pile when I did my lawn. It’s approximately 20,000 sqft. I had to pull the tarp with my truck. My lawn looks great now!
It helps to have a pull-behind dethatcher and lawn sweeper
I’d get that seed down tomorrow and water dilligently. Winter is coming.
Take up composting next.
I was looking on here a few weeks ago about machine dethatchers vs manual ones. One comment read something like, “try out a manual rake then come back and tell us what electric model you bought.” I thought, “nah I can handle it.”
Anyway, after a lot of cursing and pulled muscles I ended up buying a sunjoe.
If that’s all you got then you have a small yard
Right there with you this year. I couldn’t believe all that came out of my yard. Crossing my fingers all the time, energy, and clipping bags are worth it…
Nice WRX.
I did a route of 4 properties the other day and filled up an entire long bed to the cab and it was falling over the sides, it’s light but sure does take up volume
southern Ohio is screwed this year. Frost is coming soon, and it’s still been nothing but 80+
29 yard bags when I did mine. Absolute insanity! Not sure of previous owners ever did it but we lived here 6 so years and first time it was done
I just bought the Sun Joe. Gets delivered Wednesday. Were you happy with it? Looks like it worked well for you
You need to fertilize, there’s no green.
The worst part about it is that it’s completely pointless most of the time.
Oof. Yeah I might be doing one this afternoon, will see how that goes. I do it annually at that property and it’s about 380m² (4100 ft²), I usually get a few woolbags out
I bought a cheap corded SunJoe from Amazon. Did the section of lawn that was thin. Put seed in my broadcast spreader and applied it. Then spread starter fertilizer from Menards and threw some of their sphagnum peer moss on it and watered fairly consistently for the next couple of weeks. Now I have some fairly amazing results. Lots of thick, new grass !!
Ugh going to be doing this for the first time in couple of weeks on my 15,000 sqft backyard. Doesn’t sound fun.