"Annabel" wrote in message
...

"pied piper" wrote in message
...

"Annabel" wrote in message
...

Paul

I, like you am on London clay. How do you aerate your
lawn,
I
can
either
not get a fork in or cannot get it out without a
struggle. I
have a
hollow tine aerator which I bought at a local boot fair
and
its
going
back to see if some other sucker wants it !!!!

You mention laughing about your patio, do you think
anyone
else
out
there is as sad as me ---- I mow my "patio".


Bell


water your lawn for few hours a day then hollow tine
remove
the
cores
dress with a sandy soil


When you say "remove the cores", to me that means "try to
get
all of
the
core out of each tine"

Bell


the core push out of each tine as you pust it back into the
ground i
mean
remove the cores from your lawn


What I am saying is that the ground (clay) is such that the
cores do
not
come out of the tines with the ground being so sticky/hard.

they will come out when u push the tines back in the ground



They don't.

Bell


then push harder



I can push as hard and as deep as I can but the cores are sticky clay,
perhaps you have no experience of it. Mr Titchmarsh always said that his
garden was heavy clay but when he "ground forced" a garden 2 miles away
from here he found out what clay, that you can almost do pottery with,
is really like.


i have hollowed tinned plenty of cricket squares after years of rolling
and dressings of surrey loam and marl etc try solid tinning first get some
air and water into your root zone apply sandy dressings and work it into
your root zone hollow tines work by pushing into the ground then pulling
out then the next time you push it into the ground the new cores you are
cutting out will push the cores already in the tine out of the top if this
doesnt work then the edges of your tines are too blunt the clay content
will make no difference as it is the weight of the new core and u pushing
that will push out the other cores