I have since use my Mantis for dethatching. I LOVE IT!!! It pull so much stuff out of the lawn it fill up a 40 gallon can and more....stuffed. The lawn looked nice right away, not like what other people warn me that it will look bad for 2 weeks. It does not beat up the lawn at all. It immediately look better right after. I end up re-dethatch few weeks later again and the grass looks very good now. Mantis as tiller....not so nice!!!! Jump to much, really not a substitude for even a cheap front tine tiller. I still use my cheap Poulan front tine tiller. Cultivator is a joke. It jump a lot more with the tine reverse for cultivation. I know it will work better if pulling backward. BUT, cultivating usually done around plants which is in tight space, where do you find space to pull backward. I tried for 2 minutes, it throw dirt all over the place, made a big mess, I quit end up using my hand roll cultivator instead. If you think of buying it as a cultivator around flower beds, think again!!! Get it from Mantis direct so you can return within one year free shipping. I am surprised very few people use it for dethatching. It work so well, no jumping, I can't imagine the Blue Bird can do much better, just wider so you dethatch a wider path. The tine look to be high quality that can stand up to use even commercially.

thanks to everyone for the comments. i posted this original item partially to help some beginners to avoid some of the pitfalls of lawn care (which this website allowed me to do) and partially to get some advice from the experts (i am no expect, me and my lawn are both works in progress). i am simply trying to fine tune my annual maintenance schedule and may post it when it is finalized. as far as chemical vs organic, i do have a 13 month old so am trying to transition to a more organic approach. but for crabgrass and poa control i will likely stay with pendamethalin (halts/dimension) and keep her off the lawn for a week or so. for antifungal, i will try to stay will fine cracked corn, but if major parts of my lawn are dying i reserve the right to treat with a more potent, target specific chemical (i realize then i will lose the option of using cracked corn/corn meal for 2-3 months). in the past i have been too quick to use chemicals for dollar spot/leaf spot when only a few small areas of lawn have been impacted, less than 1ft diam. spots turning brown/melting out.

First question: Where do you live? That makes a big difference as to the advice we might give you. And as a corollary to that statement, not knowing where you live is why there are no really good lawn books for you. It seems to me that the lawn books are all written in Indiana for Indianans. So if you live in Minnesota, Vermont, Florida, Texas, Washington, or really anywhere outside of Indiana, the advice will not be the best. And if you live in a big place, please tell us what town you live in. For example SoCal has every hort zone and soil type, so just saying SoCal is not helpful. Even saying Los Angeles is not good because there are not that many lawns in LA proper. Plus LA extends from Long Beach to Santa Monica which covers a lot of ground. What kind of grass do you have and what do you want to have? Do you just want it green, do you want it to be all one type of grass, or do you want it to be the nicest lawn on the block? Lawns need water, mowing, and fertilizer. If you are doing those things right, then they should not need dethatching, crabgrass control, other weed control, insect control, or mechanical aeration. Lime is a different topic. You're going to be surprised at how easy it can be to have a very nice lawn, so here goes. The following is fairly generic with some attempt to expand outside of Indiana. Watering Water deeply and infrequently. Proper watering is your first line of defense against weeds. When you water deeply you will not need to water every day. Weed seeds LOVE it when you water every day. If you don't water for a week or two (or three or four), then the weed seeds cannot germinate. So just doing this right will save you the cost of all the herbicides (eventually). Deeply means a full inch all at one time. Measure that by putting out cat food or tuna cans and turning on your sprinkler. Time how long it takes to fill all the cans. Mine takes 8 full hours. It can take as little as 20 minutes, so time yours carefully. Then remember that time because that will be the time you water every time you water from now on. Infrequently depends on many factors but is so closely related to air temperature that you should start with this guideline: Above 90 degrees - once per week. Above 80 degrees - once every 2 weeks. Above 70 degrees - once every 3 weeks. Below 70 - once every 4 weeks. If you start now with that schedule then by July your grass will have developed deep roots which can withstand the summer heat and go a full week without watering. There are very few exceptions to this rule (Las Vegas area because of soil, aridity, and heat). Improper watering is the cause of many lawn issues, so get this right. Mowing Most grasses do best when mowed at or near the mower's highest setting. The exceptions are bermuda, centipede, and creeping bentgrass. Those should be mowed at the mower's lowest setting. Mulch mow once a week unless you have bermuda. That needs to be mowed 2x and sometimes 3x per week. Fertilizer You mentioned Scott's. I believe they are selling you more stuff than you need. It sounds good when you hear it, but you don't need all the stuff they push. One of the elements of lawn care which has come to prominence since the late 90s is the importance of a healthy "soil food web" in the garden. We're talking about microbes (bacteria, fungi, protozoa, and microarthropods). These critters need food to thrive and develop a healthy soil for you. So what do they eat? They eat food. If you look at the ingredients on a bag of organic fertilizer you'll see it contains wheat, corn, soy, alfalfa, and some animal byproducts (chiefly feather meal and poultry litter). All these materials are food for the surface layer of soil microbes. Lower layers live off of the waste products from the upper layers of microbes. After going through 3 weeks of microbial processing, the food you put on the soil is converted into natural plant food for your grass and delivered at root level. You don't have to do anything! The Scott's 4-step products don't have any microbial food in them so your soil can become less than healthy as the food is depleted. In fact the insecticide in their product actually kills the microarthropods...because they are insects. Wiping out an entire class of species in the food web can throw off the balance of nature until the species eventually return. All this is to help get you over the hurdle of using organic fertilizer. Most of the lawn gurus are using organics; however, they are not necessarily buying organic fertilizer. It turns out you can buy the ingredients at your local feed store for about 1/6 the cost of commercially bagged organics. The application rate is from 15 to 20 pounds per 1,000 square feet. If you accidentally double that rate it will not hurt the grass, so there's a huge safety factor built in. Or, if you want to use chemical a approach anyway, someone can help you with that, too. How often you fertilize depends on what approach you take and what grass you want. Soil testing If you want to have the best lawn on the block, or if you are having trouble growing any lawn at all, then you need a soil test. The only place to have that done is Logan Labs in Ohio. Sure you can get it done locally, but for $25 the test you get at LL will be much MUCH better than what you get at your local university or county extension service. If you do that, post your results here and morpheuspa can help you understand it and tell you what to get. Good soil tests are necessarily complicated. Cleaning up bare patches and turning them into grass will depend on what your grass is. Answer the questions at the top of this post and we can help you more.

Champ - I check mine every 2 weeks. Toro recommends using newspaper to check the sharpness. However, I use typical computer paper as suggested by several golf maintenance guys. If it doesn't cut it, I'll backlap it. I typically backlap 2-3 times a year - at most. I usually take it in for a grind every year or whenever backlapping doesn't cut it (no pun intended). I always pick up debris with my rotary and bag it before I use my reel. The worst part comes after I topdress the lawn. That is what causes me to get a grind - backlapping does nothing at that point. Champ/Sherm - I get seed heads every now and then, but that is the nature of the beast. They pop up quickly. My grass is said to be sterile since it is a hybrid, so I collect the clippings when they are up to reduce the thatch build up - plus, it makes the lawn look ugly when they are laying all over. turflife419 - I need to put down some PGR next week. I'll be out of the country for two weeks - so it will look like a jungle when I get back. It will probably be two weeks of constant mowing to ease the grass down to where I want it. The PGR will hopefully help if we don't get too much rain (like recently). I don't trust anyone else to mow my lawn or use my equipment for that matter. I'm in the process of getting it to 0.325" before I leave so I have some sort of a head start. dchall - I use milorganite twice a year. I've tried the alfalfa pellets before, but then the dogs end up eating it (and sometimes they eat the milorganite or just roll around in it). I'm sure if I used corn gluten meal, soybean meal, or sugar, they will be snacking that up. I have 3 dogs - one lab and two mixes. They are pretty good about peeing once outside (per trip), so I just use pin flags to mark the location and heavily water the area. Every now and then, one will do it behind my back. I don't think they like it when I stand there staring at them until they finish.