Hello everyone! I'm looking for some options on a disagreement between my mother and I on how often it is truly necessary to rake around your garden plants to aereate the soil. My mother feels it's necessary to do it everyday to every other day, otherwise she thinks plants will suffocate. While I know soil can become compacted over time due to water and traffic, I don't feel that doing practically everyday is vital to plants wellbeing. I could see raking the topsoil only if you've had a heavy rainfall or if you stand/step around your plants a lot but I actually didn't use to do it at all. This aerating thing is something new that got into my mother's head last year and now she makes sure I rake around my plants otherwise she thinks I'm not being a good gardener. What does anyone else think on this?

Aerating is usually for grassy lawns and not flower beds. If she feels they need it take
a pitchfork and gently do so but be careful not to disturb the flowers. I been here on our property for 33 years and only aerated twice. What types of soil do you have?
Clay needs to be done more, but Ya know they leave the plugs on top of the soil and
when it breaks down those plug holes will fill back in if you don't rake them up. Personal preferences in my book.

Hello and thank you for replying! My native soil is red clay but we plant in raised beds filled with mostly sand that was dug up from a sandy spot further down our road.

Common practice, I would say, is plant your flowers, mulch them and never rake around them.

TomatoNut95
Entirely unnecessary and actually does more harm than good. Disrupts the surface roots, soil structure and beneficial organisms living down there. Unless you walk around your plants everyday it should maintain healthy friability left alone.

Gardeners have used hoes for years, which would actually do the same thing a tine rake would do if you are trying to mix the very top surface of the soil. I hoe to control the weeds around the plants, and maybe only a few times a season.

kenisaac said: Gardeners have used hoes for years, which would actually do the same thing a tine rake would do if you are trying to mix the very top surface of the soil. I hoe to control the weeds around the plants, and maybe only a few times a season.

I work my soil periodically, too, for various reasons, but that, or hoeing for weed control, isn't the same as "necessary to do it everyday to every other day, otherwise she thinks plants will suffocate."

I think she has a fundamental misunderstanding about soil structure, the role water plays, and how plants' roots behave underground.

Aeration is done most naturally, with the least damage (except in the case of voles, moles, ground hogs, prairie dogs and pocket gophers ), by earthworms, insects and other ground dwellers.
They don't usually need our help.

Thank you everyone for the replies! Weed control is another reason she'll rake around stuff but mostly it's for aeration. I'll hoe or pull up my weeds but I agree its probably not good to mess around near plants roots as i know some plants are shallow rooted. My mother wants to hoe around her rows of peas and beans and aren't peas and beans shallow rooted? I mostly grow tomatoes and peppers and have never hoed around them but like i mentioned, since this aeration thing my mother must have read about somewhere, she makes sure I rake around my garden plants despite my better judgement. But i really appreciate all these replies here and I will definitely pass this along to my mother. Maybe she'll finally get that crazy idea out of her head.

Anne, encourage your mom to join NGA so she can ask questions, or maybe you can ask for her. Perhaps if she explains how/where she got that information we can help put it in context and ease her fears. It could be as simple as misunderstanding something she read.

NMoasis said: Anne, encourage your mom to join NGA so she can ask questions, or maybe you can ask for her. Perhaps if she explains how/where she got that information we can help put it in context and ease her fears. It could be as simple as misunderstanding something she read.

I'd love for her to join but my mother is not a very sociable person. She hates social media and she doesn't find much pleasure in talking with people over the internet. Besides, she doesn't garden for pleasure or therapy as she hates summertime and isn't fond of the outdoors. She wants to grow peas and beans just to have in the freezer to eat the rest of the year. She'll read online articles or see stuff in books but mostly she's on eBay or Wal-Mart or Amazon if she's on her phone. While I to can be a loner at times, I enjoy chatting with other folks especially about subjects I'm fond of like gardening. I love getting ideas and stories from other folks to improve my gardening habits because sometimes just reading a book isn't the same. I garden because I love it. While i know beans and peas are very good to have and are better than store bought canned or frozen, tomatoes and peppers are more my thing with the occasional okra or squash or cucumbers. Peas and beans just...aren't fun to do!

I think I'd let Mom rake around Mom's plants while forbidding her from going near your section.
Tell her that it's a side by side test to see which side grows the best...

Personally, I wouldn't want any aeration done around my plants, but side by side tests are valuable.

Buy her some earthworms to dump around her plants, they'll get all the aeration they need!

Honestly, aerating the soil around my plants is something I've never even considered. So you rake the top soil, possibly 1/2"-1" soil gets moved around. Most of the roots are much deeper than that. How does moving topsoil help the roots get aerated?

The only time my perennials get topsoil moved a bit is when I add a slow release fertilizer in spring for a few plants and work it into the top 1" of soil. My annuals, whether in ground or in containers, never get the topsoil disturbed at all. And they all grow just beautifully.

I agree with the advice to let your mom do her thing to her plants, but stay away from your plants.

Well, if I don't rake around my plants she thinks I'm not being a good gardener. But I totally agree with y'all; I was thinking about that this morning: let her harm her own plants with her own methods, but my plants are my own territory! She doesn't like my tomatoes and peppers much anyway, she doesn't think they're near as vital as peas and beans. But thank you everyone so much for telling me all this. If my mother wont believe me after I tell her that then tough!

My understanding is that aeration is more important to think about if you're making a raised bed with poor quality soil, and don't have much access to nutrient-rich soil, like compost. Or just for a new raised bed where the soil microbes haven't had time to set up yet.
In that case, adding some cardboard paper towel rolls and tp rolls under the soil will help with aeration, and also attract worms, who love cardboard. They will help with aeration long-term.
If you want to make sure things are draining well through the clay underneath, I would suggest planting Daikon radishes! They will do the work for you, gently pushing other roots aside, and you won't have to worry about damaging them, as you would with a rake.
If your mom insists on using a rake to aerate, I would suggest just poking it down in one spot, and lifting it straight back up, then repeating, to do the least damage to roots.
Here's an article about working with clay soil (in NC, but guessing a lot of the same tricks apply): https://durham.ces.ncsu.edu/20...
Hope this helps!

Aeration is an important consideration for any medium a plant might be grown in, but unfortunately, scratching the surface of of the soil with a rake doesn't provide any meaningful improvement in air porosity. What it does do is eliminate or reduce the amount of dead vegetation that provides cover for fungal spores or prolongs the period of continually moist conditions fungal spores need in order to germinate.

One of the primary reasons we like to "feed the soil" is to promote large numbers of soil flora/fauna, the presence and/or movement of which through the soil naturally increase soils' air porosity. One of the reasons air porosity needs to be 'built into' container media is, containers are generally hostile environments to the soil life that keep mineral soils well-aerated.

Good luck convincing mom. Be glad you have her. You can let her down easy by telling her about the fungal part, but then she might still be after you if only for that reason.

Al

FYI, thread is from May 2022

@tranquilDoe @tapla. Thanks for your replies. I think my mom has gotten better on wanting to rake so much but I'll believe it when I see it this season!

I'll be curious to hear how things are going.

As far as I can remember, this is my first time hearing about aerating ground plants at all. Soil that has been gardened for any length of time by having organic matter added occasionally and repeatedly should have all of the oxygen a plant needs. Potted plants get a lot of publicity for needing airy soil, but that is not the topic of discussion.

I've really only heard of aeration in regard to lawns. There is a roller thing with spikes and it is walked around the lawn to aerate it. I think it's a busy-body thing that people who get paid to tend lawns invented so they can charge for doing more things to the lawn, but my opinion is clouded by my disdain for the growing of grass merely to grow grass.

Aeration (using to mean presence of oxygen and decent drainage) occurs at a microscopic level, not by digging tons of little holes in the ground or, as said, scratching the surface. Without a layer of organic matter on the soil surface, the soil will dry more quickly than necessary, compact, and when it rains, the water will flow across and pool instead of soaking in instantly.

There should be dedicated places for stepping and an effort to never step anywhere else. I use 12" square bricks for stepping stones. They're inexpensive and just the right amount of space for 2 feet. I always pick up a few when I'm where they sell them, eventually I'll have paths. I can move them as needed, also handy for smothering a tough weed that didn't come all the way up when pulled.

Although I'm speaking from the experience of watching this transformation happen in various places, don't just take my word for it. Dr. Elaine explains it so well, without a lot of technical jargon. Just pure plant happiness info.
https://m.facebook.com/jamrege...

The answers so far seem to indicate that the answer to the original question about how often this is necessary is never.