Dethatch or not
 

Our lawn car company wants to Dethatch our lawn.
Wonder if this is a good idea. Appreciate any and all
opinions,

We had our seven year old lawn aerated, by Adam who does pine straw and black cow. Give him a call he’s honest and will tell you if you need something done. At the time we had multiple houses he went all three and only one yard needed some attention. Phone number is 352-342-1384.

Dethatch and aerate are not the same.

Most of the info i have seen is do not de-thatch Florida lawns, now having stated that, I would suggest contacting master gardener to get professional advice. many lawns have grass with roots very close to the surface, and you can do damage to the lawn by trying to remove thatch. Also, since the ground here is mostly sand, you will find the thatch is useful nutrient.
This is my understanding, I have lived here 4 years, I have our lawn maintained by Deans for almost 4.5 years, and they have never suggested de-thatching, and the lawn looks very good. I am not an expert in this area, so please check on your own. Also, there have been several previous threads on this subject that will provide additional info if you do a search.

Really.... as in one rakes up dead thatch, with prong like equipment, and then removed, and other one pulls plugs every so many inches out of the lawn, and left to decompose.

My family owns commercial lawn and snow removal I actually know the difference. Our preowned lawn had been neglected for over a year. We asked Adam to Evaluate whether detached would work since dethatch is not usually done on sand based turf. Adam told us that an aerate would work better, within two weeks we had a big difference in the lawn. He also top dress with black cow. We use Deans for monthly maintenance.

I trust is ability to decide what to do with our lawn. We’ve been using Adam since 2010.

I’ve ripped up my share of zoysia grass. A dethatching would undoubtedly cut up the good healthy horizontal roots and do more damage than good. When the grass grows dormant cut it down real low, wait for spring and do a good raking and aeration.



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Yup. See... you catch on fast.

I dethatched (manually, using a rake) two areas in my yard that the drought had taken its toll on. I was amazed how much dead grass I removed. Fast forward a month and a half, and you could never tell where the dead area was. It looks fantastic.

I've been here 5 1/2 years Village of Sanibel never dethatched lawn looks great.

before one can answer the dethatch question one would have to know if the grass is Saint Augustine or Zosyia

We aerate but with the vines of Saint Augustine prefer not to dethatch. beside with florida's sandy soil aeration seems to do the job. We have only aerated and sometime i wonder if this that is even needed? But the lawn is green and lush and so i will continue with this regiment

I double aerated my yard last week (yes, I did it myself), fertilized it, started watering it and it is really starting to look good (as good as it looked when I did the same thing to it back in March).

Type of grass? Probably yes.
University of Fl has done research on this. Try and see if their site can help.

I do my own lawn & just my own opinion I think my lawn looks better than any of my neighbors that get there's done by the so-called professionals. Actually one of the lawn service guys stopped by 2 yrs. ago & gave me a couple of tips on what he thought I was doing wrong, well it worked. As long as I can do everything around my house myself it'll keep me off the couch & keep me healthy. Don't want to have anybody do anything for me just to have me age quicker. Personally I think there's just to many services in TV for people to get ripped off by. Sorry for being so negative but most of them are just ripping people off & these handful of people just keep forking out the money, sorry again! Dethatching can be over done but that's what this guy said I wasn't doing, to much thatch & it was smothering my lawn!

Never did either in FL over 10 years and grass is great. But to each his own.

Re; dethatching with a rake
 

Frankly doing it by hand does a far better,less damaging job than a machine. The proper tool is called a push pull rake or it is called a convex rake. If, you have a large lawn you will only do it once. If you have a small lawn it will seem far larger than it is a brutal job by hand.

RE: pulling the runners
There are commonly two types of grass in Villages lawns.
Empire zoyzia and St Augustine. If, you don't know which you have, the zoysia is finer textured and the st augustime is courser-wider blades. PLEASE DO NOT START THE MY GRASS IS BETTER THAN YOUR GRASS.

The zoyzia runners are underground and the St Augustine is above ground. You will likely pull out more st augustine then the zoyzia but it does not really matter-it will quickly grow back.

Either of the grass types are slowing down now for the winter (10/31/17) now is not a good time to dethatch because you will encourage weeds.