vanpein Lawn Aerator Coring Garden Tool With Tray

It had been raining here in Calgary (Canada). I expected this manual lawn aerator easy to use as shown in the video, but I was wrong! The soil kept getting stuck in the three hallow slots, and the metal that is supposed to help in pushing the dirt out is not helpful at all – due to the shape/design.

If you have tougher, rocky soil, this WILL NOT WORK well for you. However, if you soften the soil with some water and then try to use this it can work a lot more effectively. Thats what I had to do. My soil was pretty dry and tough. I needed to soften it with some water for a day and then when I tried to aerate it in the morning it was a lot easier to drive into the ground as opposed to during the day when the sun was out and the soil was very dry.
Much cheaper alternative.

The tool is sturdy, sharp, and is suitable for small lawns and compacted areas. Overall I’m pleased because I no longer have to contract with someone to core our lawn. We have heavy clay which causes at least one of the holes tool to clog about every 10 strokes. The included cleaning tool isn’t terribly effective. I managed to bend it badly. My biggest gripe is the protruding fasteners that hold the tool together. My knee hits them painfully. I covered them with foam pipe insulation which solved the problem. I leave the cores on the lawn so the tray is not helpful. A wider step surface would make stomping more comfortable.

Pretty useful tool for aerating you lawn. I like the tray that collects the plugs so you can put them where you want instead of just on the lawn where you cut the plugs.

This is a great tool to help aerate a small lawn. It took a few attempts to find the right balance without clogging the aerator with dirt, but best to not use when the grass is really wet or super dry. If you had some good rain, just wait a day or two and this tool is amazing. Easy to use and collects the plugs in the tray. I did have small rocks clog the tool, but the sharp coring tines helps remove that.

I live in SoCal in the Inland Empire. Our soil is a little more on the sandy side, but can still get to be a bit compact like dg (decomposed granite). My front yard needed a little help, so I bought this aerator to open up the soil and get more oxygen flowing. Yard definitely responded with a few weeks.

The product is well built, I found it a little hard to puncture through my dense soil. What I ended up doing was getting a rubber mallet to help hammer it into the soil to get as deep a plug as possible. After going down one side and coming back of the front yard, I ended up with a lot of blisters. So if your soil is really hard and compact, 170 lbs may not be enough to really puncture through the hard ground.

Hole size is fine, not too small and not too big. Tray allows it to catch the plugs when they get pushed through.

Assembly is easy and the black looks nice.

All in all, I like it, but it does require a lot of manual labor.

My ~1000 sq ft of lawn was in dire straights. I live in a dry climate (Alberta) and my lawn was mostly brown. I had dug a hole for a new tree and noticed the soil under the grass was basically dry for at least 1ft down. I was hesitant to rent a machine or call someone to aerate the lawn. I didn’t want to have any of the “plugs” left on the lawn (I have a dog – aeration plug or doo-doo?). I read the reviews on this product – both good and bad. In the end I decided to try the product. I followed the advice of one buyer and soaked the lawn first. That did nothing – none of the water went through the grass matting. I decided I would aerate in rows about 6 inches apart. It was tough slogging because the soil was so dry (and in some cases quite hard). Getting the tool to go all the way down often required rocking left and right quite a bit. It took me about 10 hours over 3 days to do my entire lawn. Three coring tubes was the right number for me. Having more than that would have made things too difficult. The tray on the tool holds about 10 sets of cores. The “fork” that comes with the tool works well for cleaning out the coring tubes. A lot of work, but well worth it. With some watering and help from Mother Nature, my lawn is now almost perfect (and survived a 10-day heat wave quite well). HINT: In the really dry/dead spots, I dropped a few grass seeds in each hole just to see what would happen. It was the best idea ever. All holes sprouted new (and obviously deep-rooted) grass. I will be aerating again in the spring. It should be easier next go-around.