# Air8 vs Aeration



## Amorae (May 14, 2019)

I'm getting ready to overseed in a couple of weeks on my fescue / *** lawn.

The soil is compacted in a lot of areas. Weeds are mostly under control. There are some bare areas where clover and other weeds were previously.

Considering mechanical aeration and top dressing bare areas with compost per the overseed guide on this forum (thanks!), but I'm concerned about potentially waking up new weed seeds. Anyone have issues with this? Did you spray Tenacity a few weeks after seeding with success?

Is anyone convinced Air8 (liquid aeration from GCI) works equally as well as mechanical? Has anyone tried it and not seen results? I know this has been discussed elsewhere on this forum but I'm looking for any updated results anyone might have. We have a Robomow (robotic lawnmower) so there are wires in different parts of the lawn that would need to be avoided with an aerator.


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## beardizzle1 (Jun 13, 2019)

@Amorae ROBOMOW?! How well does it really work? I personally enjoy the mow too much to ever go this route, but curious on its effectiveness.


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## Amorae (May 14, 2019)

Robomow works pretty well. The annoying thing is - you can see the tire tracks on the path it travels frequently to get back to its base. The grass doesn't grow well here but it is a small inconvenience for an hour or two saved per week. My husband chose it over a riding lawn mower. It occasionally gets stuck in the drainage ditch but otherwise does a pretty good job. One more annoying thing is on its path back to is base, the Robomow only travels in one direction so the grass is kind of flopped over in this area. I plan to rake this area and mow with a regular mower in the opposite direction soon to get it shorter. These are the things that annoy me - the one who notices detail and has really started paying attention to the lawn this year. However my husband loves the Robomow!


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## Mattsbay_18 (Aug 3, 2018)

Amorae said:


> I'm getting ready to overseed in a couple of weeks on my fescue / *** lawn.
> 
> The soil is compacted in a lot of areas. Weeds are mostly under control. There are some bare areas where clover and other weeds were previously.
> 
> ...


I would give the Air8 a shot if I were you. Unless you pick them up, classic aeration will leave nuggets all over the place which will give the robomow more of a challenge. Also I wouldn't mess with accidentally hitting the barrier wire with the aerator.


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## Amorae (May 14, 2019)

@Mattsbay_18 I'm thinking the cores will be broken down by the time of the first mow (maybe 2 weeks after seeding) but I've never done this before so I don't know for sure. I'm looking for the most effective option that will give me the best results.


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## Khy (Jul 27, 2018)

So I used to be a mechanical aeration truther until last year. My soil was always really hard in a few areas, I'm talking like, couldn't get a screw driver more than an inch into it or so. I had done mechanical aeration every year and it did much of nothing. So I decided to try Air8 at the start of the season. I admittedly went a touch heavy on and did like a max rate application every 3-4 weeks at the start of Spring last year and wouldn't you know, I can now pull a like 6" plug with my manual hand plug tool in those same areas.

John Perry has a video briefly explaining it and what he says basically does make sense. If you think about hard soil and how a mechanical aeration works. Even if you water the hell out of it, you're maybe pulling up soil from the top 1-2" tops? When soil is that hard, you're not actually getting a 3-4" plug. Then thing about root growth, you want your roots to get as deep as possible, definitely deeper than 1-2" into your soil. So does loosening up the top 1-2" of soil actually do much?

In terms of the liquid aeration, it's slowly over time being worked into the soil and (not a scientific explanation) creating small oxygenated bubbles of air inside the soil and loosening up the structure and it's doing that much much deeper than 1-2" of depth. As every watering will pull more of the solution down.

So for me? Yeah, the liquid aeration was vastly superior. There are areas that I could never get a stand of turf to survive in years past that last year, when I overseeded had 8-10" TTTF roots within two months post-overseeding and were thriving hard. I saw enough benefits from Air8 and RGS carry over into this season that they're definitely two products I'll continue using going forward in my lawn. Although this year all I did was a Air8 dose to kick off spring with my Prodiamine app and then I just did another one the other day as I prep for my fall overseeding here in a few days. And going forward that's probably all I'll have to do for maintaining the soil for aeration.

Edit - Didn't see the part about Tenacity. I sprayed Tenacity at seeding last year in my reno area, just to combat any Poa potential and it did a decent job a lot of weeds that started coming up white and died so it did it's job in that regard. My understanding though was not to reapply Tenacity on young seedlings. As the stress from Tenacity can kill them or significantly stunt their growth.


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## Suburban Jungle Life (Mar 1, 2018)

@Khy If you only get 2" plugs from a walk behind aerator, I would instead rent a stand on 1000lbs aerator. That'll pull 5" plugs easy. Better yet, use an aeravator. Then, adding amendments would be easy too.

This seems like too much work though. I would just use air8. I've had great results. Others haven't so it is probably soil dependent but at the price compared to renting equipment and the hassle of using the equipment, I would rather just spray.


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## greengrass (Sep 9, 2018)

Khy said:


> John Perry has a video briefly explaining it and what he says basically does make sense. If you think about hard soil and how a mechanical aeration works. Even if you water the hell out of it, you're maybe pulling up soil from the top 1-2" tops? When soil is that hard, you're not actually getting a 3-4" plug. Then thing about root growth, you want your roots to get as deep as possible, definitely deeper than 1-2" into your soil. So does loosening up the top 1-2" of soil actually do much?


I'm curious, does he explain the difference between the other products in the Next lineup. When I look at the ingredients in Air-8 it lists humic acid and potash (derived from potassium hydroxide). The same ingredients are in Humic12, just different concentrations. All the other products have humic acid too. So, is humic acid the "aerator". Seems odd to have a one off product that is advertised as liquid aeration when the core ingredient is in all the other products.


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## Guest (Aug 9, 2019)

It definitely seems like a much simpler approach. Last year while aerating, I broke a sprinkler pipe that took hours to fix, had to dig up a bunch of the yard. It was a pain.

From now on I'm just doing things like humic, air-8 and will use a sun Joe dethatcher/scarifier or something similar.

I do think taking measures to ensure good seed to soil contact, like thatch raking, along with air-8 and proper watering would yield good results.


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## CPA Nerd (May 8, 2018)

greengrass said:


> Khy said:
> 
> 
> > John Perry has a video briefly explaining it and what he says basically does make sense. If you think about hard soil and how a mechanical aeration works. Even if you water the hell out of it, you're maybe pulling up soil from the top 1-2" tops? When soil is that hard, you're not actually getting a 3-4" plug. Then thing about root growth, you want your roots to get as deep as possible, definitely deeper than 1-2" into your soil. So does loosening up the top 1-2" of soil actually do much?
> ...


I think the KOH (potassium hydroxide) is what makes it a good aerator. Or something to do with the reaction - check out this video.


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## Khy (Jul 27, 2018)

greengrass said:


> Khy said:
> 
> 
> > John Perry has a video briefly explaining it and what he says basically does make sense. If you think about hard soil and how a mechanical aeration works. Even if you water the hell out of it, you're maybe pulling up soil from the top 1-2" tops? When soil is that hard, you're not actually getting a 3-4" plug. Then thing about root growth, you want your roots to get as deep as possible, definitely deeper than 1-2" into your soil. So does loosening up the top 1-2" of soil actually do much?
> ...


There is a difference, I don't really recall why but I do recall it being explained by John and Matt at some point or another over the past year or so of videos I've watched. I understand where you're coming from though, the AI label really kind of makes all the GCI products seem nearly identical with just slightly different %. What I recall mainly is that the basic idea is that Air8 unlike Humic12 somehow creates these micro fissures in the soil which allows the roots to dig deeper and easier and allows for more oxygen and water to get down into the root zone which then creates even more room for the roots etc.

It's basically a vicious cycle so to speak. Something causes the fissures, the humic helps for nutrient and water uptake, which helps with forcing the roots to dig deeper, which further opens the ground etc. etc.






Here's the video of John Perry discussing it. The big point he says at the end is on core aeration and overseeding and it's a point that really makes a lot of sense when you think about it. If you aerate and make these holes and then seed without filling in those holes, you're getting seed to soil contact, yes... but your grass blade is now growing 1-2" below the surface and can from there get suffocated out and killed as those holes fill in. The ideal situation with mechanical would be to aerate, collect all the cores and then top dress the holes with sand, which prevent the holes from filling in as fast for one and two sand allows for nutrients, oxygen and water to pass through it nearly immediately. So you're basically creating a 1-2" depth pathway for water, nutrients and oxygen to get deeper into the soil faster. Which is what golf courses do, but home aerations never do really. Most just leave the cores to degrade into the lawn and at that point... you're not really doing anything. Those cores are getting broken up by water, turned into a mud and just slowly flowing back into your topsoil and at that point basically nothing happened.


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## social port (Jun 19, 2017)

For further reading on Air-8 and KOH. https://thelawnforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=3246
Plenty of times I have also been a little fuzzy on what makes some of the N-Ext products distinct from one another.


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## NewLawnJon (Aug 3, 2018)

I will say that I was skeptical of the liquid aeration at first since in my area they train you to pull cores every year. For the price of a rental for a day though I was almost to the same price as renting a mechanical aeration, and when you factor in the amount of work it takes to mechanically aerate I decided to give Air8 a try.

Starting this spring I started to apply Air8 with RGS at 6oz/M, and followed up every 6 weeks or so at 3oz/M. Through 90+ heat waves my soil has remained softer and pliable, where the neighbor who mechanically aerates has soil that is hard as a rock, and the grass in general doesn't seem to be as healthy.

Having said that I think that there are limited times where mechanical aeration makes some sense. If you want to amend the soil it might make sense. For me I plan on bringing in sand and working to level the lawn in the spring and fall next year. This would be a time when I would mechanically aerate, remove the cores, and add sand. Outside of these type of things I would say it makes more sense to use Air8/RGS or a decent carbon based fertility program.


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## john5246 (Jul 21, 2019)

If you need results fast nothing beats mechanical aeration (pulling plugs, or poking holes with spikes)

Instead of Air8 you can buy humic and use soap at home (or for even cheaper route buy Sodium Lauryl Sulfate). I bought mine from kelp4less but look around. Bought the SLS off ebay.

Some people advise against mechanical aeration because it brings weed seeds to the top.

https://youtu.be/oKzwgJMy0sQ


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## Amorae (May 14, 2019)

Khy said:


> So I used to be a mechanical aeration truther until last year. My soil was always really hard in a few areas, I'm talking like, couldn't get a screw driver more than an inch into it or so. I had done mechanical aeration every year and it did much of nothing. So I decided to try Air8 at the start of the season. I admittedly went a touch heavy on and did like a max rate application every 3-4 weeks at the start of Spring last year and wouldn't you know, I can now pull a like 6" plug with my manual hand plug tool in those same areas.
> 
> John Perry has a video briefly explaining it and what he says basically does make sense. If you think about hard soil and how a mechanical aeration works. Even if you water the hell out of it, you're maybe pulling up soil from the top 1-2" tops? When soil is that hard, you're not actually getting a 3-4" plug. Then thing about root growth, you want your roots to get as deep as possible, definitely deeper than 1-2" into your soil. So does loosening up the top 1-2" of soil actually do much?
> 
> ...


@Khy thank you for sharing your experience. It's hard to find honest reviews from people that have no stake in the product.


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## Khy (Jul 27, 2018)

john5246 said:


> If you need results fast nothing beats mechanical aeration (pulling plugs, or poking holes with spikes)
> 
> Instead of Air8 you can buy humic and use soap at home (or for even cheaper route buy Sodium Lauryl Sulfate). I bought mine from kelp4less but look around. Bought the SLS off ebay.
> 
> Some people advise against mechanical aeration because it brings weed seeds to the top.


No offense, this is pretty bad advice though. Mechanical aeration has it's place for sure... spikes though, compact the soil more, they don't loosen it. I think you could make the case that mechanical aeration is the better long term option where as a solution such as air8 is the better short term option. Air8 took one season to make areas of my soil that were basically concrete into really great soft soil. Aeration can take years if you're plugging, top dressing, plugging, top dressing before you really see true results on loosening a hard clay.

Also, Humic and Soap will work more or less to an extent, but it's certainly not the same thing as Air8. Air8 as far as I know, doesn't contain Sodium Lauryl Sulfate at all in fact.

As for the kelp4less stuff? You'll get better results from N-Ext or Simple Lawn Solutions products. Those products really don't separate much at all. Where as the kelp4less separates instantly basically, I tried it once last year, I had to uncap the head of my sprayer to clear a clog w/ a pin three times from it and I stirred the every loving crap out of that stuff over the span of a couple days. I ended up pouring it mostly onto my tree out front by just mixing it in a few buckets full of water and giving my tree a huge helping of humic. John Perry had a pretty good video showing how a lot of the humic in the mixture basically never gets into the soil with the powder mixes. Because it never mixes well enough so what ends up happening is some of it makes it into the soil, the rest just sits on top and runs off with rain.


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## john5246 (Jul 21, 2019)

Khy said:


> john5246 said:
> 
> 
> > If you need results fast nothing beats mechanical aeration (pulling plugs, or poking holes with spikes)
> ...


I had no problem dissolving the humic from kelp4less, I know people believe the N-Ext products are some mircle because some youtubers are marketing them but they aren't. I'm glad you had a great experience with them and if you like them use them. I had good success with the humic/fulvic/kelp blend along with SLS (soap). Perhaps you got a bad batch of the humic? Also you probably were trying to dissolve too much in too little water. Too bad you had that experience because the N-ext products aren't sourced from some magic place. It's all the same stuff in the end. Where do you think the guys got the idea for humic and all that stuff? From lawn forums! :lol: It's amazing what some youtube marketing can do :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

In fact I've been using soap to help soften the soil since the 90's! :lol: 
Oh man I needed a good laugh. These ideas have been around way before the guys invented the N-ext products. It comes down to who is adding the water. If you'd rather have them add water for you because you don't have access to water then by all means go for it.



Khy said:


> John Perry had a pretty good video showing how a lot of the humic in the mixture basically never gets into the soil with the powder mixes. Because it never mixes well enough so what ends up happening is some of it makes it into the soil, the rest just sits on top and runs off with rain


yeah this sounds completely unbiased and scientific. If you don't properly dissolve it then I guess that's what will happen.


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