The ‘sod removal’ interjection was pure class Stuart…..

I'm someone who has watched and subscribed to many many DIY KZfaqrs. Yours are by far the most interesting, funny and frankly straight to the point. You've saved me a good few quid on doing things myself. Keep up the good work!

I'm currently revamping our garden, shed, fences and decor but I've got a novel, painless sweatfree method of improving the lawn which doesn't involve backbreaking physical effort. I'm getting someone in to do it...

This is up there with one of the best videos you have done. The cheeky jump cut, the ease of which you went from metric to imperial measurements and that fantastic string line tip. Definitely top three videos, maybe even number one!

Was waiting for Plan C - Dewalt combi drill + 10mm auger bit to pepper the lawn with holes in a similar fashion to how you planted the laurels last year

“ cheeky “ “ sod removal “ pure genius 😂🤣👏👏👏

Instead of throwing it away, keep the 2 outside tines and the middle one and cut the other 2 off. Soak the area you want to work on the night before. 5 tines would be hard to push in, 3 obviously easier to use. Here in Australia I tend to aerate in winter/early spring when the ground is soft because I have clay to deal with. If you want a better tool look online at the Yard Butler, very good tool, although only 2 tines.

I have just purchased the Swardman 3 prong aerator and shared the cost with my daughter and her partner. It's working absolutely fine. Most of the time the soil plugs are ejected neatly out of the front ejector. My soil is damp and firm at the moment, but not soggy. The aerator is definitely built like a panzer tank, i. e. solid! It's the first time I've ever done lawn aeration. Speaking petsonally I'm very pleased with the purchase.

Before you throw it away, remove a couple of tines and have another go, it should go in the ground easier and therefore eject the cores more efficiently. Another great video 👌

My wife walked into the room at roughly 15:35 into this vid... "Get out, you f****......" She said "sounds like you babe", rolled her eyes and walked back out! 🤣🤣 Thank you Stuart for another great slice of advice. 👍 I've been away and I've missed this! Hope all is well mate. 🇬🇧🇺🇦

There are commercial aerators that you can rent that do a very good job in removing the cores. They are very heavy, use them like you would a lawnmower and. Aerate your entire lawn, rake the plugs off, top dress your lawn and finish off with your topsoil/compost using your spreader that you made, seed, water in if you like and put your feet up. Although personally i would get a small garden tractor and drag a bigger topsoil spreader behind the tractor on that big lawn you have. After years of doing all the hard stuff in the garden manually and recently had both knees and both shoulders replaced a garden tractor is more a necessity for me now... love your videos!

Not looked at all the comments but your attention to detail A++. The sound change when you take the ear plugs out. Nice little touch.

I was pleased to see your experience with this device. I had a very similar one from another brand and didn't get on with it. Sat in shed for years until we had a clear out and I tried it again with same results so it got recycled. Loving the channel overall well done.

I bought a 2 core 'Yard Butler' aerator from Amazon US store and imported to the UK. Didn't work out too expensive and is absolutely brilliant! No clogging at all, as long as you use it on wet ground. Highly recommended!

Really pleased you showed this one. I have often thought of getting one of these but after this? No way! As an aside, may I congratulate you on your patience and perseverance? I'd have given up long before you finished.

Hi, I can symapthise completely as I have gone through the same struggles with the hollow tine fork as you have. I agree with Anthony B, my tool started to work much better when one tine broke off leaving only 4. I have filed and polished the inside of the other tines, and now it works perfectly.

Have a similar hollow tine tool and had the same issue, but watching some vids on KZfaq gave me an idea... cut ejection holes in the sides of each tine using metal cutting blade on angle grinder and dremel type tool to file sharp edges.. and I've just done my garden this week and it has worked very well... not perfect, but so much easier to prod the occasional sticking core out

It's actually great to show tools that don't work. That way we know what to avoid, saving us money and sweat! thanks for that.

Great video and the cut between cheeky and sod removal was pure genius. I love your humour Stuart.

Great video, top tip about how to tie the string line! Thanks for showing your failures with modifying the tool, I thought you were invincible but now realise you are only nearly invincible! 😀

Thank you !!! You have just saved me some money, I was on the verge of buying the same tool

I also had problems with a similar aerator. I gave up and replaced it with a Walensee Lawn Coring Aerator. This works really well. Get the occasional blockage, but clears out easily.

really useful. I have a big garden and thought to get a manual aerator , which sounds simple in theory, but your video make great sense of the main problem being the plugs...!

I love the honesty. You’re right, these manual tools just don’t work. Experienced exactly the same thing myself

Top man Stuart! I'm a total novice at DIY at the grand old age of 45 but learning loads everyday 😁😁

I have a 3 tine aerator and had a similar problem. I eventually figured out that the main problem is where the tines are welded onto the frame warps the inside of the tine making the inside diameter smaller. After dremmeling the inside smooth, it worked much better.

love this channel, not only for the actual, usable, and useful information, but also your sense of humour. You cheeky...sod :)

I love your channel, please keep the content coming. One thing I would say having used my lawn master hollow tine aerator is dont throw the plugs away, let them dry naturally and rake them up. These are great for compost - or if you have a rotary mower, they make free top dressing. I learnt this off lawnsmith channel.

Wow, thank you for this video. You taught me a few really good and interesting tips that I hadn't anticipated for aerating the lawn!

Had one of those aerators myself and broke the handle off trying to force it into the ground. Very frustrating! Enjoyed the video 👍🏼

After watching your lawn leveling lute and deciding I was going to build my own one and weld it together, I also have been drawing up plans to build a hollow core aerator along the lines of the swardman professional aerator that has the plug ejection holes.

I just bought the Walensee one for £30. Although it only makes two holes it’s really fast, really easy to use, has a nice big section you can put your foot on to push it into the ground and so far no blocking at all.

I wouldn’t let it beat you.. I’m sure you could make something similar maybe with 3 tubes.. smaller cutting bit with bigger ejection tube and shorter tube.. next vid idea??

Loved the video Stuart: the frustration when things just don't pan out was refreshing to watch.

Liked the muffled ear plug bit...nice touch!

So glad I found this video was considering getting one of these tools they look a good idea but now can see id do better saving my money. Thank you for sharing.

The traditional way with a garden fork seems a lot less hassle. Your videos always seem to contain a helpful tip like today's tip about the string line so please keep them coming! Regards Keith

That's a video that brings back painful memories of been there - if you're in the Midlands area and you want to borrow my powered hollow tine aerator - you are more than welcome

My wife bought me one of those gadgets as a birthday present about 10 years ago. I gave up after a couple of attempts and it's been hanging up in the shed ever since, just in case...... You are prompting me to get it out and dispose of it.

Great video; it's nice to see a video that shows that not everything goes to plan, and even experts like yourself don't know everything. I prefer to use a wetting agent, which is cheaper than renting an aerator and less effort than doing it manually.

Had same problem. Sent tool back. Got better one. THEN REALISED... supposed to work on sopping wet ground. Drenched lawn with hose. Worked fine

Just do it when it's wet. Works a treat then.

sod it all Stuart. your doing a great job of your home.

Saved me from buying one ! With the size of my lawn, I would have gone mad!!!

You need a manual core aerator with non-clogging tines (they have a section removed from the body of the tines so that there is nowhere for soil to get stuck). You can also buy the tines separately and weld them onto your existing aerator as a replacement for the supplied tines.

Thanks for the video. I had the same issues with the Draper version of your tool, looks like the same junk I have. I tried sharpening the ends but no luck. A soil probe with a cut out in the tube works great, but as it is a single tube will take forever.

That is a coincidence as I was doing the same job myself today (just the edging and not the holes in the grass). I am also adding wooden planks as edging, which makes the job even more protracted. BTW, those high spots could well be ant nests. If they are, to make matters worse the soil tends to be harder where the ants are active.

After thinking about it Stewart, if it's just a small area, then use your drill and garden auger you used for the Laurels up back in the review given in Jan, drill down and replace with better soil, I think this would be good for a small area.

Loving your videos Stewart very informative, I have one of those 5 prong aerators and I use an old 12mm masonry bit to help clear the hollow tines, and that's after the sharpening polava, again it's OK on reasonably small areas but would not want to do a large area.

Very enjoyable tale of the turf, I see Murphy's Law doesn't just visit on my tools and projects. Have a good week mate.

Wonderful saga of frustration... and loved the "sod"...

Swardman is expensive but certainly does the job. The cut away lets the cores tip out easily. I have used it a few times now and have had no problems

15:24 Love your frustrated honesty 😂

I've found that if you really water log the soil the hollow tine will sink in much easier. It might be a bit tricky to waterlog a high spot but perhaps by just leaving a hose on a trickle or using drip irrigation on that spot it will work

The best hollow tine tools have a cut out half way up the tube to help release the soil plugs

Re the aerator: been there, done that. In the end I brought a 1 inch auger bit, 2 feet long, and, using an electric drill, I easily drill 1 inch holes in the lawn where required. The downside is it leaves the earthy swarf on the lawn (and it can get a bit hard on the wrists, but my lawn is small.) But it works, and quickly. Cheers!

I have the same aerator and it does work if you change your technique. Use it at approx 30-45 angle to the grass instead of straight up, and you need to use some momentum to get the tool to easily enter the grass and push the previous plugs out. Hold the tool to your foot above the grass and drive it in starting about 30cm in the air. Might take a bit of practise but it does work for small gardens. When you get into a rhythm you can plunge it over and over without stopping and cover ground quite quickly.

I grabbed one from Amazon which was useless as it had some crap rubber coating on it and even inside the corer itself so I got the angle grinder out and ground it off at the tips and sharpened them, then it worked a treat 👍🏻 also to add I cut prongs 2 and 4 off so there was only 3 requiring less weight to push through the soil

I’ve been struggling with the same aerator. in the end I cut off spikes “2” and “4” leaving the outers and centre. it works a lot better now.

Mate I just bought one and had EXACTLY the same issue. I’m glad you confirmed I’m not the only loser in the crap aeration tool game!

Mine is 3 tines and still same experience. Those areas that are hydrophobic and compacted are very hard to work and extract core plugs from, even after a heavy watering. I resigned myself to just spiking them with the same tool and using a surfactant... I must also add compost to make that spot settle lower. I think a single tine 1 inch internal diameter is what I need for these compacted spots.

Great video - shame the sharpening didn’t improve the tool - so I invested in a “yard butler” - heavy lawn aerator with just 2 hollow times - used it last year ( dry spray food safe silicone spray on the inside of the tines ) and managed to cover 1/2 the lawn and seems to have improved this year following the first cut….

There is a very expensive hollow tine aerator by Swardman (only available by import in the UK) which apparently works well. The difference is it's only 3 tubes and has cut-aways on the front of the tubes to eject the cores much more easily

On your aerator, the section that is smaller diameter on the cutting end should be a bit longer before it is enlarged toward the ejecting end, more like a quarter or a third of the tube length. I have a butler tool where it is designed a little better that way but only has 2 tubes. I've found sharpening them like you did helped to penetrate the ground, but also carbide burr grinding off the weld blob inside the tubes and polishing the whole inside smooth and round really helped a lot. After the tool was working more consistently and was producing nice 3-4" plug cores, then in really compacted areas or when I hit a rock, I was boring with a 12" x 5/8" masonry drill down into the same holes, a full foot deep. I back filled the holes with a humic acid & biochar granules from the Andersons called Humic DG Charx, then even poured a shot of 2-0-2 Neptune's Fish & Kelp Turf liquid fertilizer into each hole, then watered it all down. It was horrendously time consuming, taking me 4 hrs to do this to just 100 sq ft, but rewarding at the same time, and better and deeper than most machines can do except for those drill & fill machines that can drill 60 x 5/8" holes 18" down simultaneously in a 5" spaced grid in seconds.

I had to do this and the local old guy said to waterlog the grass so I basically made it a bog and it worked perfectly. He did say it helps if the soil is quite clay style like mine was as its "slippy"

I had similar issues with getting our laurels to take. Planted in March time and 6 months later leaves were all brown:yellow and basically a disaster. A combination of replanting a bit closer together (we went with 50cm from the original 100cm), covering the soil with multiple bags of compost plus this special tomato plant fertiliser liquid that absolutely stunk, finally got them to take. Got a lovely fast growing hedge now 2 and a bit years later.

Soak area night before always worked when I did gardening for my late father plus he put a 45° grind on the plugger to help

Haha. I had exactly the same jurnay last summer🤗 great video

oh man, I thought you were going to show a working tool at the end. It feels like potentially it needs some kind of easy sliding mechanism to lock it in to place and align the bolts with the tubes and a leveraged plunger to push the cores out. Or cut out half the tubes so the cores aren't stuck inside. So the cutting ring with a half tube attached to it so that the cores have less surface area to adhere to.

11:00 nice bit of sound editing there Stuart :-) I agree with your observations as I have one of these. I was expecting you to cut I slot down the top length of the tube. Then knock in a wedge to open up the tubes from about a 3rd of the way up ;to make them cone shaped).

I got one of those aerators given. after removing the paint from where paint should not be and running a file round the business end to sharpen the tips and a round file sorted the insides of tubes where they had distorted due to the welding. it worked as intended but the soil moisture content has to be just right. If you want to get soil into narrow holes try drying it then use drill with a plaster mixing tool to mix the dry soil into powder.

Another suggestion I have for your core aerator, is to cut a slit from about a half inch above the bottom opening all the way to the top so that you could easily slip a screwdriver into it in order to help clear the various tines. I believe it would also make it easier for the course to be ejected on their own.

After watching your scaifing mower video youtube recommended another lawn renovation video (lawnright) and he confirms what your showing here. The better quality manual plug cutters have fewer tubes and after about 3" the tube goes from being solid to windowed to allow plug ejection. Maybe angle grinder time, cannot break something already broken. (Swardman Professional Stainless Steel Hollow Tine Garden Fork Lawn Aerator)

What a great video Stuart you cant always win with garden tools, you may want to put some bark on that bare soil saves a lot of weeding in the future as we have learnt in the last two seasons

I have the 2-prong fiskars core aerator and it's great. 5 holes probably makes it much trickier

We need a hollow core aerator shoot out. Maybe speedy the snail can help out.

Good video !! thanks

Those aerators are a bit dire, I use a garden auger bit (like the one you planted the Laurel hedge with) in the impact driver. You can get smaller diameter ones and they make perfect holes and even pull the big stones out, then seed and top dress. Top tip with string line. 👍👍

Cheeky…. Sod removal. Love it. Sprayed my tea!

Well that’s saved me buying one, so I’ll carry on using a garden fork.

Yup a hollow tine aerator with ejection holes is what you need.

For the past couple of seasons I’ve rented a hollow tine aerator from a tool hire company. Takes about 30mins to do a 100 sqM lawn. I share the cost with a couple of neighbours who use it once I’m done.

It would be interesting to see a video of you surveying your garden to try and predict the areas this issue will occur at. I've seen a couple of surveying methods from using standard equipment to using a laser level and measuring the high change on a large bit of wood

I enjoyed your pain! Well, sorry. But those of us that have as many failures as successes know this happens but no one documents frustration. So thanks for that and it gives me hope that if your frustrated that I shouldn't be any more frustrated than you and can more easily come to terms with it. It's very therapeutic!

There is a company here in Aus that makes after market tines for the cheap coring tools, they literally slide into the existing tines as a direct fit and are much larger. I was equally as ready to throw the coring tool over the fence until I found the better tines that you just weld on in place. Still get bunged up but nowhere near as often and they side eject. The tines look like the Swardman ones mentioned in the other comment.

#1 the soil must be soft enough to aerate with this or even an aerating machine. #2 I found it easier to push 1 tine into the ground first, then, wiggle the others down after it. But no matter what you do, 5 tines are much are to push in than 2. I also cut 2 of the 5 tines off, and 3 is still difficult. I found that I could do 2 holes, 3 times, and make 6 holes faster than I can make 1 pass with the 5 hole aerator. Take your time. Wear very solid shoes that won't flex too much when you push down, or else you will hurt your feet really bad. Do small areas, and take lots of breaks. The tool works, but brute force is not a good idea. Work smarter, not harder.

Very realistic review. I found these are worse than useless if you have clay, stoney, or soil with tree roots. I've resorted to using a drill with masonry bit in parts of my lawn, as it's the only thing that will make an impact. The type of lawn this tool would work on would have to perfect, and therefore not compacted to begin with.

Stuart, try using vegetable or sunflower oil for the lubrication. I copied you almost exactly with the same tool, I had a wide bucket with vegetable oil in it and just dipped the tool in every second go, I also watered my lawn the day before I used the tool, it worked a treat and the oil is harmless to the garden. I also use vegetable oil lubricant timber mouldings for concreting ie a mow edge moulding.

The 5-prong aerator is more suitable for putting greens, while 3 prongs work better for less sandy topsoil.

Try cutting an aperture in each plug to reduce the friction and mimic the front or side plug ejector types !

‘Sod Removal’. Very clever editing. 😂

Maybe you've already chucked that tool, but maybe here's a solution: leave the first few centimeters intact, but then higher up make a relief cut along the length of each tube?

Instead of using half moon turf cutter for this sort of job I’ve found that using a sharp knife against a timber straight edge is much quicker and produces a straighter edge. To overcome the knife edge getting blunt I use the snap off blades which can easily be replaced and are fairly cheap

I cut the front half of the tube off leaving bottom half of tube closed to leave it open above at the front and a 3mm channel down the length of each time with a stihl saw, let’s the soil plug pop out the front, same idea as the Swardman

Got to admit I hired one....heck of a machine. Be good (if you got chance) to design and make a garden work station/storage/potting bench to your standards of robustness, preferably with barrow wheels on. Thought about it for years but now your here I could copy the design 😁 Anyway thanks for another video, well presented and always entertaining.

I love your video but on the hollow core aerator, you are using a 5-tine manual aerator. That takes a lot of work and weight to get into the soil. Try using a dual tine manual aerator and you'll find it works a lot better and easier. Also make sure that you have semi wet soil in order to use it. That allows the tines to go in easier. Just a thought.

try using a 25mm auger drill bit, on your drill, works well for me, easy to do small areas

You had a difficult time aerating your high spot. I purchased a Walensee aerator 2 prong and keep soaking garden with sprinkler for a few times over a few days prior to aeration, done 60 Square meters in 2 hours and aerator only blocked a few times. I'd try and cut off a few steel cores on your aerator and see what happens.

I feel your pain! I had the same issue but you persevered a lot more than me. I imagine it would take greenskeepers years if they had to do it like that every time. You’d probably be better if hiring a petrol machine if you wanted to do the whole lot. P.S I don’t recommend the sandals with nails on either - the straps keep coming undone

I'm a bit late but I've noticed some hollow tine aerators have a window in them, maybe you could cut a window in the tines to ease ejection?