Lobster wrote:
X-posting this to uk.d-i-y: I bet someone *there* will have an
answer!! :-P

Lobster wrote:
I have a very mossy lawn, which I gather needs (amongst other
things) a good working over with a fork to provide better
drainage.
I have acquired a gadget which purports to perform this rather
onerous task with minimal effort - think it came from the
mail-order firm Coopers or somewhere?

It has two 6" wheels and a long handle, with lots of spikes on
springs attached to a 15"-wide frame which spans the wheels; the
spikes prod the ground to a depth of approx 2" as you roll this
contraption along the lawn. (It looks a bit like one of those
old-fashioned manually-powered cylinder mowers with no grass box).

Is this spiking deep enough to do any good, or are we talking
chocolate teapots here?

I speculate about all this lawn-aeration business that most of the
time it won't make any difference, be the holes two inches or twenty
inches deep. A good population of earthworms and other friends --
and, indeed, some enemies -- will do the job. What punching holes in
the lawn _will_ do is let you brush in some sharp sand, which will
make the soil texture more open at root level, especially if you keep
it up for fifty years. Roots themselves do the same sort of thing as
they penetrate and get eaten.

I suspect the two-inch-prong machine may not make holes big enough in
diameter to get the sand in there. But it's bound to loosen things up
a bit after a season's family football or ferocious earth-flattening
love-making, so it can't be a bad thing. But absolutely no surface
treatment can help with poor underlying drainage.

--
Mike.