# core aeration / top dressing and soil level



## vicmar (Jul 7, 2020)

Hello,

I have a lawn for two years now and it seems I made some mistakes during planing, that I would like to amend without destroying the existing tall fescue lawn.

My local soil seems like a good mix with sand and clay, but I decided to rise the level of my lawn by few inches. I arranged two loads of soil, that happened to be black clay. It gets very sticky, when wet and forms bumps all over the lawn. It also does not have good drainage and I get moss and fungi. Beside those problems, it turns out I made the level too high - if I try to topdress with sand (to level the bumpy lawn and to improve the soil), I could go over the ground level of my porch.

My question is about core aeration: if you do the core aeration and do not fill the holes, they should fill with the soil around them. Does this mean, that the overall level of the yard drops a tiny little bit? If you soften the soil after the aeration with something like SLES, yucca extract or liquid aerator, it should break up easier to fill up the holes?

If you leave clippings and topdress regularly, then the soil level would slowly rise. How do you counter this effect over the years?


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## MarshalOfFire (Apr 22, 2020)

Most lawns will not grow appreciably from just mulching clippings.

For aerating, the cores are typically left to break down, leaving the same amount of material in the yard and not changing the level. You could rake the cores and pick them up, then top dress with good soil or sand to fill the holes. This wouldn't change the height of your yard.


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