Dethatching Your Lawn

This video demonstrates how you can remove thatch in your lawn through the process of scalping, with some advice on how to go about it the best way to avoid causing any unnecessary harm to your lawn.

If you’ve got a thatch issue going on, during the growing months you can get in a couple of low-mows to remove the thatch layer. This is not advisable for all turf varieties and in some circumstances its best to hire a de-thatching or scarifying machine. You can scalp a buffalo/St Augustine lawn, but you have to be extremely careful to not take it down too low as this turf variety does not have rhizomes below the surface for regrowth, it relies on stolons to spread and establish.

A study carried out by the University of Western Australia a few years’ ago, compared different types of renovation for turf and they found that the results from a ‘hard-mow’ or ‘scalping’ was just as good as scarifying, coring, or grooming when it came to dethatching a lawn.