What kind of aerators do you have? Spike or core? Any brands you’d recommend or stay away from? How often do you use them? I just saw some that were really expensive, so I don’t know if they can be rented. It’s our first aerator - LOL! Thanks!
I rented an aerator once for the yard and tried it in one paddock, thought it was helpful and fertilized after use. Doing fields, several paddocks now,I think I would get a disc over an aereator. More useful to me, doing acreage over small paddocks or the yard of house. I run the weighted disc one pass over grassy fields, twice over bald places or hard, compacted dirt. I weight the disc with several old tires so it bites into my harder ground adequately to cut deeper. Purpose is to slice open the dirt, let in air, help catch rainfall. Slicing helps divide grass plants too, they seem to grow better after discing. I then fertilize the land, run the chain harrow/drag over the ground and hope predicted rain arrives! Dragging breaks any lumps, clumps into dirt, lightly fills slices with plain dirt, smoothes the ground, but still allows good water absorbtion during rain. I don’t feel the aereator went as deep into the ground, nor does it smooth or soften packed dirt very much. It does an OK job of hole making, just not cutting deeper, only good for one purpose. My disc is more useful, adaptable for this slicing job or completely tearing up the field for replanting, getting rid of hard packed dirt where horses have made trails.
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Yes you can rent them, at least around here. From a tractor/farm equipment supply store. We rented one a few years ago, it was fairly expensive (we felt), but it worked well for us. We are looking to buy one, looking for a used one. It seems that some are sitting around, and not used or popular around here, local farmers tend to plough fields up instead. We can’t do that, we have too many rocks. We heard an older, used one just sold locally for $2500, and we didn’t hear about it in time. So if anyone local has one sitting around that they don’t want any more, PM me please.
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I have a drum spike aerator that we can pull with either the garden tractor or GC. Looks kinda like this: https://www.mowersdirect.com/Yard-Tuff-SE-40/p65416.html. It works fine for our needs on the farmette.
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New, they are $20,000 apparently.
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