Walensee Lawn Spike Aerator, T-Handle, Manual Dethatching and Soil Aerating Tool with Four Iron Spikes, 35.5 Inches, Grey

Wonderful piece of kit. Moderately physically tough to use. It does actually work and you can cover a sizeable area in reasonable time. The area in the photo took me about 45 minutes and this was damp heavy clay in March. The hollow tines will block after a time and if you clear them with a screwdriver, stick or whatever- it will not work. You have to clear as much soil as possible with any implement to hand and then clean out the tine completely with a hose. This also lubricates the tine - it will then work for a while before you have to start again. I had to clear the tines about 3 times for the area shown. Should look like a flock of incontinent geese have just paid a visit.

This arrived yesterday, along with the 4-pronged aerator and both were put to immediate use. Frankly, it was an impulse to buy both at the same time, but our lawns are large and we wanted to determine which would be the better option. The lawns are also on very stony, fairly sandy ground, so we anticipated problems particularly with this hollow-tined version. The lawns have received a great deal of rain recently and the ground is soft, but it drains well and it is not water-logged. I scarified the lawns thoroughly around a fortnight ago, so there is not a great deal of thatch to contend with.The pronged version worked very well, and although it will not penetrate buried stones, it seemed to deflect away from them and for the most part it could be buried with relative ease. As I understand things, the drawback with this tool is that although it will open voids in the lawns to allow ingress of air, nutrients and water and release of CO2, in creating the voids it compacts the soil adjacent to them. By contrast, the hollow-tined alternative removes plugs and by doing this reduces compaction, so I was hopeful this would work in our stony lawns. I used the hollow-tined version for around 2 hours and was disappointed, if not surprised, to find that it clogged-up after around each 8-10 insertions. The tines could be cleared using a long screwdriver, but at this frequency it seemed impractical.Today I tried both on an adjacent lawn and I was astonished how much easier it was to use the hollow-tined tool. When I finished using it yesterday, I thoroughly washed and dried it and applied a coating of vegetable oil, to minimise rusting where the paint had been scraped away. With much of the paint inside the tines removed and the coating of oil applied, it worked like a dream and during something like 5 hours of constant use, I probably had to clear the tines less than 10 times. I did not re-apply oil until cleaning and packing it away at the end of the day's work.Inevitably, the tool is never going to cut through sizeable stones and in a number of locations it simply refused to dig-in, but even in our very stony ground it probably did as required 95% of the time.This activity is neither quick nor easy, but after briefly trying aeration using a gardening fork I had no expectation that it would be, using any manual tool. Nonetheless, I have no regrets about buying either of these tools and weather/back/knees/blisters permitting, I shall resume the exercise with the hollow-tined version tomorrow.It is too early to comment on the durability of the tool, but at present it almost deserves 5 stars and I have witheld 1 star mainly because the handle-grips are not particularly good, even when used with an essential pair of thick gloves.Update:I eventually completed the full area of around 600m^2, finishing around 4-5 weeks ago. In total it took around 30 hours, achieving holes at approximately 100mm centres and leaving all of the plugs on the surface where they fell. The aerator was magnificent and dealt with everything without damage. Most sessions lasted around 4-5 hours and it was only cleaned/oiled at the end of each session. I learned to time the activity whilst the soil was damp, but fairly well drained. This way the tines simply did not clog up and unless stones caused obstruction, they pushed up numerous soil plugs. I have never aerated the lawns before, although I have regularly weeded, scarified and fed them, but they have never looked anywhere near as thick, green and healthy as they now do. Numerous bare areas now sport thick grass and despite almost incessant rain, the grass is too thick for any appreciable amounts of moss or weeds to become established. All of the plugs have dissolved and merged out of sight within the lawn.The benefits of this aeration within a matter of literally a couple of weeks vastly exceeded all of my expectations and a month after completion of the task I could not be happier with it. I now regard the aerator as a hugely beneficial, if labour-intensive tool and recommend it enthusiastically to anybody with enough time and energy to put it to use.

The Walensee Lawn Coring Aerator is a game-changer for my lawn. It’s easy to use, even though it’s manual, and it really helps loosen up the soil. You can feel the difference in the grass afterward – looks healthier and grows better. The build is sturdy, and it punches nice, clean plugs. If you’re serious about your lawn, this tool is worth it.Quick and effective!

I used this to renovate the teeny tiny lawn in my new home, which was overwhelmed with moss and weeds when I moved in.Once I'd got rid of the moss I used this to aerate the soil. It worked ok, and was easy to use, but the holes got blocked quite a lot so I had to keep poking them out with a stick after every few cuts, which slowed me down and was a bit irritating. IF my lawn were bigger I would have had to find a better solution so if you're hoping to use this for an average sized lawn be prepared to spend a lot of time clearing the holes and perhaps look for a better solution. But having said that, this did cut through the soil really easily (I think because it only has two holes--the ones with four or five holes can be very difficult to use), and it did the job in the end.Best thing though is that my grass now looks fabulous. I am a happy gardener!

Clogs far too easily works great for 30seconds then completely blocks. I spent 10x longer trying to unblock it than using it, also end up straining my wrist with the constant trying to clear it with a screwdriver. Sent it back and ordered one with cut outs on the tines and seems much better

ordered it for my lawn work, it got quite some positive feedback that’s the reason i picked this brandit’s not heavy, feel very solid, it got padded non-slip handle as well, looks like a decent core aeratorit worked really well from start, did just about 20 square feet of lawn, one side started clogging, the other side has no problem, they’re literally working on same area, not sure why one stuck while other works finetook over 5 minutes to unclog the tube, seems moist mud can clog the tube easily, honestly i waited until the lawn pretty dry before starting the work, but deep under 4 inches there will always be moist mud, so clogging will happen for sureeven i cleared the clogging, it clog immediately when i use it again, even the tube was completely clean, seems the tube needed to be dry before next use, that made it useless for the day once cloggedthe design of the tube definitely has some issue, so frustrating to use itwhen it works, it’s great, when it clogs, it’s time to call that a day