Why Lawn Experts Swear by This One Simple Tool for a Thicker, Greener Summer Grass

Some of the best tools for transforming your lawn are common gardening tools. You don’t need fancy technology or gadgets for a glorious summer lawn. A lawn rake perfectly exemplifies this, as it offers a multi-purpose, budget-friendly way to complete many essential lawn maintenance tasks.

It is particularly beneficial in the spring, as among all the tasks this essential gardening tool is useful for, dethatching makes a huge difference to your lawn and can be done quickly and easily with a rake. It means more air and water reach your grass, helping it to be lush, green, and thick for the summer.

Lawn professionals agree that a simple lawn rake is often an under-appreciated tool that comes highly recommended for all homeowners to have in their shed. If you have yet to start your spring lawn care, there is still time, and owning a lawn rake will help your lawn look fabulous.

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You can get a strong 24-tine steel lawn rake with a fiberglass handle at Lowe's.

What You Can Do With a Lawn Rake

It might not win any awards for fashion or technological advancements, but a lawn rake is a valuable, budget-friendly tool for maintaining a green, thick lawn. And every homeowner should have one in their shed.

Indeed, Todd Huffine, the owner of IMPACT Lawn Service in Cincinnati, says that a lawn rake is ‘easily the second-best investment of money most homeowners could apply for a beautiful lawn’ as it is inexpensive, durable, and multi-purpose.

(If you are interested, Todd named a soil meter capable of testing PH and moisture as the best tool, as many lawn issues come from less-than-ideal pH or moisture levels. You can get a 4-in-1 soil meter at Amazon that tests for pH, moisture, light, and temperature.)

So, how can a lawn rake be used in lawn care? Let us count the ways.

As the name suggests, a lawn rake is good for raking. This can be getting rid of leaves from a lawn in the fall (allowing the lawn to breathe) or dethatching in the spring (removing moss and debris to allow air and moisture to reach the roots). Both of these are crucial tasks across the seasons for keeping a lawn healthy and attractive.

Also, a spring-tine lawn rake can be used to lift and loosen matted grass, a condition which can be caused by winter snow or foot traffic and affect the lawn’s overall health.

When grass condenses into a matted carpet, moisture is trapped under the blades, and air circulation drops – this makes the lawn susceptible to fungal diseases, including snow mold in the winter and red thread and blight in damp, humid summers.

Thankfully, a few minutes spent raking affected areas will lift the matted grass and make an instant difference.

When overseeding a lawn, raking the area beforehand is recommended to remove thatch and moss. Raking also roughs the soil surface, which helps guarantee good contact between the ground and the grass seed to aid germination.

Finally, a lawn rake can be used to disperse compost or topsoil on a lawn, flatten mole hills or worm casts on a lawn, and spread soil plugs when a core aerator is used to aerate a lawn.

Overall, it is quite a list of lawn care tasks for which one tool comes in handy – you can understand how a lawn rake can see a lot of action throughout the gardening year.

The Best Job for a Lawn Rake in Spring

A lawn rake comes to the fore in spring, when looking after the grass needs to be on any spring gardening checklist. The ideal window to give your lawn some TLC in spring is from mid-March to the start of May, depending on your location and grass type.

However, Chris McIlroy, lawn expert at The Grass People, claims to ‘not be disheartened’ if you haven’t gotten around to it by late May, as there is still the opportunity to head out with the lawn rake and help the garden ahead of summer.

‘Don’t put it off until next year, there is still time to get your lawn in great shape,’ he says.

Firstly, the rake can be used to clear the lawn ahead of getting started. As Chris recommends: ‘Before starting any lawn care, remove all the debris that has made its way onto your lawn, such as stones, twigs, branches, leaves, and even litter.’

The core task for the lawn rake is dethatching, as excessive thatch in the grass leads to unhealthy lawns with shallow root systems that are more susceptible to pests and diseases.

Todd Huffine claims you don’t need an expensive rake to make a big difference to the overall health of a lawn in spring. He says that a ‘once-per-year thatching’ with a rake benefits any lawn as there is ‘less dead debris on the soil surface, preventing air and nutrients from entering.’

‘For under $20 and less than 20 minutes of effort, you can massively improve the health of your lawn by letting more air get into the soil and making pathways for additional morning moisture to reach the grass,’ adds the lawn expert.

Depending on the size of your lawn, it may take longer than 20 minutes. It might be a workout you can break up into smaller sections, but the rigors are worth the results.

You can get plastic or metal spring-tine lawn rakes, and the latter are the best to add to your tool shed. The tines are strong yet flexible, and perfect for raking up debris. A metal-tine lawn rake is a more multi-purpose tool, while a plastic one (like this plastic lawn and leaf rake at Lowe’s) is suited to gently raking matted grass and collecting leaves.

Shop Lawn Rakes

You can get a dedicated thatching rake (such as this thatching rake at Lowe’s) with sharp, rigid blades specially designed to rip and pull out dead grass and moss from a lawn. Whether you need one of these specialist tools depends on how often you dethatch a lawn, and if you’d rather have a tool you can use for many other jobs as well.

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Meet the Experts

Chris McIlroy

Chris McIlroy is the technical product lead and in-house lawn seed expert for The Grass People - a grass seed company that champions high-quality lawn products and shares expert advice. Chris's expertise is focused on sowing, mowing and maintaining a perfect lawn, and how to overcome any lawn issues homeowners face.