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Hi folks,
Running around my 1/2 acre yard with my John Deere X570 lawn tractor tends to compact the soil, especially where I turn a lot. Yes, aeration, probably annually, is the answer. But.....

The gas powered ones run over 10 grand. That's a lot of loot for as much as I'll use it. No, I wouldn't justify the expense by doing other lawns.

We paid to have it done last year and ended up having weeds transferred to our yard due to the machine not being cleaned between uses. We're not going that route again.

Soooo..... What are the more affordable options for a reliable/durable plug aerator that will be used on harder soil and can be pulled around by my X570? I realize it won't be cheap, just wondering about decent options. Thanks.

It is a piece of kit you will use for 1 hour once a year
Go hire a self propelled one or get a lawncare specialist to pop in and do it one a year
IF you lived to be 1000 years old you will still pay less by doing either of these .

You could rent a plugger. You also might be exposing weed seed imbedded and dormant as you aerate ( just a thought). The Agri-Fab pluggers are cheaper and if you wait and do your aeration on a wet lawn you will get good penetration, possibly adequate enough.

I found an affordable and effective way to aerate. It's called "Air-8". It's a liquid aerator you apply to your lawn. Works great on clay soils like we have around here. A guy up the street from me uses it and swears by it. Must work, his lawn looks great. I understand there are granular brands that you apply with a spreader too. Those one takes up to 3 years to take effect. I'll go with the liquid.

Interesting.........

Build your own. use old skill saw blades as the disks. yea they make good plinking targets also.

I'm a little late to the party, but many years ago I purchased an AgriFab plug aerator. Out of the box it did a marginal job. It took about 200 lbs. of weight to get full penetration which made it hard to raise the tines with the hand lever. Also, all the plugging heads were attached to a single. It made gouges with the outside sets of plugs when turning a corner.

The first modifications were to cut the axle into 3 parts and add outer support plates. I also added and bearings to each of the new sections. Now there are 3 individual axles with only 2 sets of plugs on each axle section. This eliminates the gouging when all plugging heads were attached to the same axle.

The original axle/coring head assembly looked like this:

Later modifications include a rack on the top of the frame to hold suitcase weights, and a modified trailer tongue jack powered by a modified windshield wiper motor to raise and lower the plugging heads. Here are som pictures of the completed project. I use it 2 to 3 times a year and about the same at the family cottage.