I'm only going to do this once. Excuse my french but verticutting is
a royal pain in the ass. It needs to be done, but man it is a nasty
job. A verticutter is a dethatching machine. Instead of the vertical
tines it has vertical blades. The lawn is cross cut in two or three
directions. On an average size lawn you will get 3 or 4 pick up truck
loads of dead matter. Afterwards your lawn will look like total crap.
Treat it like a newly plugged lawn. Whatever you do don't screw up on
the watering. Water daily for the first few weeks and when it starts
to recover cut the water to twice a week.

If you keep it up and do it every two or three years it's not bad. In
south Florida everone dumps tons of fertilizer on their lawn to keep
it lush and green. Then in five or six years when they have a five or
six inch spongey mess they want and quick fix.......cheap.

When you toss someone a 3 or 4 hundred dollar price tag for the job
the go nuts. All I can tell them is no problem....we also lay sod.

If it is let go too long the roots of the turfgrass are suspended in
the thatch matter rather than soil. Hence more water more fertilizer
more bugs more fungus yada yada yada.

I used to make big bucks verticutting lawns. And then I got old. Oh
well.
On Thu, 5 Jun 2003 17:56:39 -0500, "Ray"
wrote:

Please could you expand on Verticutting. I'm not familiar with that
process.
Thanks,
Ray

"Dave G" wrote in message
om...
In south Florida we verticut St Augustine.
On Thu, 5 Jun 2003 16:29:16 -0500, "Ray"
wrote:

I used a weed killer that is spayed on the lawn with the water hose and
killed off the white clover that I was targeting and a fair amount of
bermuda and centipede.

I have read in the Scotts website that St. Augustine grass can't be
dethatched because of the way the roots run on top of the lawn.

Does anyone tried something different or was able to dethatch ???

TIA,
Ray