DIY Dethatching Using 15” Sunjoe Dethatcher Scarifier Spring Fall Lawn Care

All right so last year I made a video dethatching my lawn with the 13 inch Sun Joe dethatcher and I was so impressed with the way that it worked and the results that we got and where my lawn was starting to go that this year when I let the lawn go dormant and kind of die out and take a turn for the worse because I was working on some other projects I wanted to make another dethatching video but instead of making the same exact video I decided to buy the new and more powerful 15 inch Sun Joe dethatcher and I just got done using it yesterday and without giving anything away I'm pretty pretty impressed with how this went. All right so ultimately it was a really hot summer I was really busy and I did do regular fertilizing but without an irrigation system and as hot as our summer was the lawn went dormant. The grass went into a non-growing stage and kind of browned out and because of that now there's a bunch of dead grass patches in the yard and these patches are keeping the ground from getting water and getting air to those roots so I really want to get rid of that dead grass so that I can fully utilize this year's growing season. So the first step of that process is going to be mowing the lawn and as it turns out a new dethatcher is not the only thing that I bought this year. I ended up buying a Toro Time Master and I've got to say this is the best push mower I've ever used. I'm not going to get too far into it in this video but I will probably end up making a video just on this mower because I'm really liking this thing. But I'm going to go ahead and mow the grass with the bagger on so that I can keep all of those clippings so that we don't have to deal with them later. Also I'm mowing two settings lower than I normally do which is a full inch lower than I normally do so that we can get down lower and get more grass out of there making it easier for us to dethatch and scarify. Then on to the main part of the project and I'm starting with the newer 15 inch dethatcher. I have the power raking attachment already on and the machine set to the zero setting which is the lowest recommended setting for power raking. Then if we look around back you can see that there's a newer larger catch basket but I'm not going to lie I don't think this thing's big enough and so we're running without it today. Then as I start using the machine I did take your comments into consideration from the previous video. I've got all my extension cords nicely organized in a place where I'm not going to have to keep moving them over and over again but as I start using the machine I'm walking at a slower than normal pace slower than I would walk definitely with the lawnmower and I'm really seeing that this thing is performing just about the same way as the previous one. The machine really does all the work it's pulling you along you don't have to push it it doesn't take a whole lot of effort. I find you actually have to try to hold it back because it wants to go and it wants to pull you along so it's a very easy machine to use and it takes very little effort. As we take a look at this thing you can see that it has some power and the one thing that I really like to see from this angle is that we're seeing just a lot of dead grass blades coming out of the ground. We're not seeing a whole lot of green yes there is a little bit so it's pulling out some of the growing grass but most of those blades are dead getting that stuff out of the lawn that we want. Taking a look at the results after a few passes you can see that there are some clumps that are left at the end because we're not using the bag and it kind of bunches up a little bit but yet again looking at that grass we're seeing a lot of dead blades and then looking at the ground it's hard to show on camera but we're really getting rid of all that dead grass down to the dirt layer. We're not scratching up or getting into the dirt too much but just pulling everything off from that thatched dirt layer up. Then I kept going one kind of thing to note is that it does take a little bit of time to do this. It took me roughly about eight minutes to mow the grass it takes about a half hour for me to dethatch that same area. Every once in a while when I found kind of a worse patch I would go over it twice or take a little bit longer going over it only because I planned on not going over the lawn more than once. Then to clean up the mess I got the mower back out and mowed yet again at the same height with the bagger on and it did a really good job of picking up most of the clippings. I probably got about 85 or 90 percent of the stuff just mowing the grass and that's plenty good enough to move on to the scarifying process. This mower works really well being really wide really impressed me. When I looked over this footage this is less than 10 minutes of footage so it took me less than that to mow this section of grass even with emptying. Then another nice thing about both of these dethatchers the 13 and the 15 it's really easy to switch from either attachment. Here I'm going from the power rake over to the scarifier and all I have to do is take off two bolts pull the power rake attachment out then slide the scarifier in and put those two bolts back in and you're ready to go. Then using the scarifier I'm going in the opposite direction that I power raked in. This is one thing that I always do when I'm mowing the lawn going against the grain in a different direction gets a better cut on the grass. In this case it gets us better coverage and then in using the machine it feels exactly like you have the power rake on it. It does feel a little bit more aggressive but it's not any more difficult to use. The machine kind of pulls itself along and it's really easy to use and it doesn't require much work on your part. When you look at what's going on underneath the machine you can definitely tell it's getting more aggressive. Looking at all the different material that's coming out of this you're seeing a whole lot more dirt kicked up and the interesting thing that I thought was in slow motion you can actually see full pieces of grass full blades of grass with roots attached to them so we're really getting down into the soil getting into that thatch layer breaking it up and getting that stuff out of there which is really cool to see. After a few passes we can see that we're still getting more dead grass out of the lawn and it's hard to show on camera but we're really getting down to that dirt thatch layer now and when we run our hands over it we're actually picking up loose dirt so we're stirring up that dirt and there's lines in the ground that are created by that scarifier blades. They're about 10 millimeters in depth so not crazy deep but we're getting down in there and we're stirring things up. It's a whole lot more aggressive than the power raking attachment. Then I kept going pretty much at the same pace that we were power raking at and it took me about 30 more minutes to complete the rest of the yard. Then to do the final cleanup I found using a rake or a blower is about the best way to go. Either one of these two methods are a whole lot more aggressive than using a mower. I personally liked using the blower because I can really get in there and blow those clippings out of the grass and it's a whole lot less work than using a rake. This is the time where it's really rewarding because you're seeing all that grass pile up and seeing how much stuff came out of your lawn. I don't think I got as much this year as I did last year with the 13 inch dethatcher but I think that's only because my lawn's just a little bit healthier this year. Looking at the final results you can see that I've opened up a bunch of bare patches of dirt where that dead grass used to be and from my perspective that's an awesome thing. That means we're ready to move on to the next step. There's a bunch of different steps. You could rent a core aerator. You could do overseeding. I'm kind of taking the easier route this year and I'm going to apply this soft soil product. This is basically like a more concentrated version of the baby soap that I put on the lawn last year that did actually give me some good results. This product is designed to be a liquid aeration product. It's going to soak down into the ground and it's going to try to break up some of that compaction in my lawn and dissolve some of that waxy coating that might be on the top keeping water from making it down to the roots. Now that I have everything exposed I feel like now is a really good time to apply this product. I'm going to go ahead and mix it up in my ortho sprayer and use the settings on the back of the bottle and apply it equally to the entire lawn. Then the only thing that I'm going to have to do is water it in but I'm banking on it raining all night tonight so I think that's going to be taken care of for me. All right, now at the time of filming this it's the next day and it's been raining all night and into the morning today to where we are right now. That's a really good thing because it's starting to kind of water in that product that I sprayed on the lawn hopefully washing it into the dirt and helping that liquid irrigation process breaking up and loosening that soil and getting rid of any waxy coating or anything that could be on my soil. The other really nice thing that it's doing is helping to repair or keep the grass less stressed. With the power raking and the scarifying you're really stressing out your lawn because you're ripping and tearing things up so watering it is always a good thing to do afterwards to keep that grass healthy and getting water down into that soil. So the question that I am trying to answer with making this entire video is which one of these two is better? 13 or the more powerful and wider 15? And I don't have a great answer to that question. The only thing that I can come up with is whichever one your budget allows you to buy I think is definitely the way to go. The 13 and the 15 I think they both produce the same exact results in your lawn. The only thing is with the 15 it feels like you're getting a little bit more work done. It's a little bit more powerful but I think it needs that extra power because the rake and the scarifier are a little bit bigger. Now there's some other things to consider when you're looking at these build quality wise. That was a question that I saw coming up in some other videos and I'll be honest they are both built amazingly well. Yes there is a ton of plastic in both of these but they're put together well. It's a high quality strong plastic and it looks like these are going to last for many years to come. The other thing that people were asking about is the basket size. This one technically does have a bigger basket to collect clippings but I'll be honest it's still too small. I ditched the basket on both of these when I was using it because either I was using my lawnmower to pick up the clippings or the dead grass that was coming out of there or I just used the blower or a rake to rake this stuff up. That really is a null point. One last thing that I'd like to throw out here is this is not a paid sponsorship video by any means. I bought this machine last year and I bought this one this year. Nobody's telling me what to say here. These are just my honest reviews of this product and I'll be honest with you I am very happy with both of these and I can highly recommend these because they've worked so well for me. The other reason that I like to recommend these is because I've used rental machines that are similar to the Scarifier and the Power Rake that come with these and these get really good results for a plastic machine that you can go buy at a big box store or Amazon. Sometimes when you use those rental machines they can actually be a little bit too aggressive. The one thing that I really found out about these is they do a really good job doing what you want it to do without going too crazy aggressive and you have multiple settings so you can dial that in for what you're looking for. If you want to go crazy aggressive you can set it down to the lowest setting that they recommend in the manual obviously but you can just keep going over it multiple times. Yeah it's going to take a little bit more time but I think in the long run with the amount that these cost you're going to save yourself money in the long run and I'm not saying that you need to de-thatch your lawn every single year but I think that these are going to pay for them once you use it more than once or twice. I also see myself using this for other things like last year I core aerated my lawn and I had the little core plugs on the ground and I used the Power Rake and the bag that it came with actually to scoop up those plugs and it did a really cool job. It broke them up a little bit but the big pieces got caught in the bag and so it worked really well for that as well. So overall I think these are probably a great tool to have. I wouldn't recommend getting both of them like if you already have the 13 inch one there's probably no reason that you need to upgrade to the 15 inch one unless you want a little bit bigger one like I did. Now as far as my lawn goes I waited to do this until the end of summer right when the temperature started cooling down because I knew that this process was going to stress the grass out a lot and you don't want to do that ideally in the middle of the summer or the heat. From here I'm going to wait about two weeks or so until we get into the really good growing season of the cool grass of where I live the perennial rye and the Kentucky bluegrass that's in my yard then at that the plan at least anyways is to go back over the yard at least once or twice with the scarifier attachment all the way at its lowest setting and what I'm trying to do is really get down and cut into that thatch layer of the yard get down into the root system get some cuts and slits in there then I'm going to overseed get some topsoil of some sort and spread it over the lawn just to cover it up definitely get those bare patches that we've kind of exposed and then water like crazy in the mornings trying to get some new grass to grow into those bare spots so if you're still watching the video at this point I really appreciate it and if you would hit the like like button that would be awesome throw a comment down below let me know what you thought or maybe some things that I can do better or just ask some questions I really like reading through those and then if you want to see a future video about what ended up happening out with my lawn either later this year or early next year or even see some of the other projects that I'm working on back there or even up here I'd encourage you to subscribe but anyway thanks for watching and I hope to see in another video