Professional Dethatching Services in Twin Cities

Thatch is a classic case of "too much of a good thing." In fact, up to a ½ inch of thatch is useful for keeping your soil cool and moist. After that, however, it can prevent water and nutrients from moving down into the soil—in effect, strangling your lawn and making it more susceptible to disease and insect damage. Add stress from drought, mowing wear and tear, plus fertilizer and weed control, and things start to get scary. Professional dethatching can free your lawn from the grip of dead grass.

At Green Horizons, we've been dethatching Minnesota lawns since 1988, using specialized equipment to remove that suffocating layer and restore your lawn's ability to breathe and thrive. When thatch exceeds that critical ½-inch threshold, it blocks water infiltration, prevents fertilizer from reaching roots, harbors disease and insects, and creates an environment where grass struggles to survive.

During spring clean-up, a regular raking will usually do the job. But lawns with a thatch issue may need heavy-duty attention. In these cases, we use a dethatching vertical mowing machine—the best technology for the task. It is a gas machine with a row of moving blades that cuts grooves into the thatch, making it easier to pull up. This process may look harsh initially, but the results are dramatic.

We highly recommend adding dethatching for "thatchy" yards prior to performing seeding. The process opens up the lawn, allowing seeds to reach soil and establish properly. Within 2-3 weeks after dethatching, grass thickens as air, water, and nutrients finally reach the root zone where they're needed.

Minnesota's cool-season grasses naturally produce more thatch than warm-season varieties, and our freeze-thaw cycles slow decomposition, making thatch build up quickly. Most lawns benefit from dethatching every 2-3 years, though heavily fertilized lawns may need annual treatment. Free your lawn from dead grass's grip—it's an investment that pays dividends in healthier, more vigorous turf.