# Baby shampoo/dish soap - does it work?



## MarkAguglia

I've watched some videos and seen that its supposed to help with water penetration/ retention and compaction and aeration. I did it a few times last year in the summer using baby shampoo and while it made the lawn smell great, I'm not sure it made a big impact, really. Obviously not meaning for it to replace actual fall aeration.

Curious as to the boards' thoughts on this. Is it recommend?


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## social port

Mark, I think you are correct to think that baby shampoo is not an equal alternative/replacement for aeration. However, baby shampoo should help water penetrate the soil.
One easy way to measure change is to use a screwdriver. I could barely get a screwdriver into the soil last year. After several applications of baby shampoo, the entire screwdriver could enter the soil in most places.

My experience supports its use.


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## ForsheeMS

My experience is the same. It does work however it's not a miracle cure. Use only baby shampoo though as most dish soap nowadays is antimicrobial which isn't good for all of the microbes in the soil. Adding organic material has helped my lawn more than anything. I've done used coffee grounds, compost and I mulch my leaves every fall and even blow some in from the neighbors lawn. I have a huge earthworm population now and they are natures aerators.


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## rockinmylawn

Between August -October last year I used 2 bottles of Baby Shampoo (Walmart brand) for my 7K sqft yard per month
By Nov-Feb'18 - lawn was really soft to walk on.
Really too soft.
So certainly - it help water penetrated. The below I am not sure were attribute to shampooing or not.
Some anomalies that occurred post application are:
Grass seem to go to Winter dormancy quicker.
Grass was slow to wake up this past Spring.
The fall overseed on the shampooed grounds didn't appear to produce any noticeable results.


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## MarkAguglia

rockinmylawn said:


> Between August -October last year I used 2 bottles of Baby Shampoo (Walmart brand) for my 7K sqft yard per month
> By Nov-Feb'18 - lawn was really soft to walk on.
> Really too soft.
> So certainly - it help water penetrated. The below I am not sure were attribute to shampooing or not.
> Some anomalies that occurred post application are:
> Grass seem to go to Winter dormancy quicker.
> Grass was slow to wake up this past Spring.
> The fall overseed on the shampooed grounds didn't appear to produce any noticeable results.


I can relate to those! I used the baby shampoo last year and had a late spring awakening and my overseeding last fall didn't produce results as I had hoped. I don't see how baby shampoo could affect either though.


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## g-man

This is an interesting subject. I learned all of this from MorpheousPA and you could find it reading thru all the ATY post.

The product being introduced into the soil should be SLS (Sodium Lauryl Sulfate). You could buy it from Bramble Berry and mix it (aka BLSC in aroundtheyard.com) with other stuff. No all baby shampoos will have SLS and the concentration is low/unknown. The BLSC is a higher concentration.

SLS is a surfactant that encourage soil flocculation (~clumps), which encourages the water to flow thru the soil instead of being a solid layer. I think/belief/hypothesis the effects (like HA) are short lived until organic matter enters the picture (decaying roots). Continuous application are needed to maintain the effect, in my opinion since SLS is water soluable. Multiple ATY members used it and reported positive results. Unless a controlled study is performed, it will be hard to tell how much of an effect it has vs. just time/roots decay.


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## j4c11

It helps with water penetration on my clay-ish soil.


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## steffen707

j4c11 said:


> It helps with water penetration on my clay-ish soil.


My god this "BLSC" in aroundtheyard.com is all over the place. It sounds like you can take 
Sodium Lauryl Sulfate (SLS Powder) and add it with yucca powder to mix a gallon batch of stuff that when you put into a hose end sprayer can cover like 64,000 square feet of space.

Somehow baby soap also has the 
Sodium Lauryl Sulfate SLS in it, but I can't find any threads that say if you mix the 80 ounces of baby soap with yucca to make the BLSC 1 gallon batch.

I'm close to understanding this I think, but can anybody tell me the formula they're using with baby soap and if it contains this yucca powder as well?


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## robjak

I have used my version of the BLSC for the last 2 years but i have not seen any real difference. I was hoping that my lawn would stay a little greener than the neighbors during the hot weeks but it was for not. I will spray more this year. its cheap enough.


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