For decades, the standard advice for compacted turf has been the same: pull cores. Golf course superintendents, sports-field managers, and lawn care operators have all been told that mechanical aeration is the only way to get water, air, and roots back into hard soil. It’s the default — but it doesn’t do what most people think.

The myth

The idea is that pulling plugs opens the soil so water, air, and nutrients can move down, and roots can follow into the holes. It sounds reasonable. The problem is everything it leaves untouched.

What compaction actually is

Compaction is the breakdown of soil structure. Healthy soil is made of individual particles bound into larger aggregates, with pore space between them — picture a jar of marbles and all the gaps around them. That pore space is where water, air, nutrients, and roots live. When the structure breaks down, those aggregates fall apart into loose particles that pack tightly together and the pore space collapses — more like a jar of sugar, with everything jammed in. That’s compaction.

Why coring falls short

Pulling plugs doesn’t rebuild that structure. At best it gives very temporary relief — and only across a tiny fraction of the surface. A mechanical aerator’s tines reach an estimated 3–5% of the ground. The other 95% is exactly as compacted as before, and the holes close back up within weeks.

The fix: change the soil, not just poke it

SoilTech addresses both failures at once — structure and coverage. Applied as a liquid, it makes the loose particles re-aggregate: its polymers carry a charge that pulls fine particles back together and opens connected pore space, turning that jar of sugar back into a jar of marbles. And because it’s sprayed on, it treats 100% of the surface — not 3–5%.

Mechanical aeration still has its place — breaking through a heavy thatch layer, for one. But for the actual problem of soil compaction, coring treats the symptom for a few weeks and misses most of the field. Changing the soil’s structure is what lasts. See how SoilTech works → or read the independent testing →.

Soil compaction is simple to spot once you know the signs: hard, packed ground. Severely compacted soil goes bare; moderately compacted soil grows thin, weedy turf. If an area stays wet long after rain or never quite fills in, compaction is usually the reason.

Why it happens

Compaction comes from pressure — anything from repeated hard rains to steady foot traffic. Sports fields are notorious for it: teams, marching bands, and crowds all pack the ground down. You’ll see the same bare, hard patches along a fence line where a dog runs, under a swing set, or in any low spot that holds standing water. Flooding compacts soil too, because standing water forces the oxygen out.

Soil type and water play a role

Composition matters. Clay compacts far more easily than sandy soil, and irrigation water high in sodium makes it worse. Sodium carries a positive charge and clay a negative one, so the sodium pulls clay particles tightly together. Plenty of golf-course and municipal water carries enough sodium to contribute to the problem.

Why it’s bad for your grass

Compacted soil is a poor place to grow anything. Roots can’t push into it, and it’s unhealthy in less obvious ways too — that same sodium competes with nutrients, so grass ends up taking in sodium instead of the magnesium, calcium, and potassium it actually needs.

How SoilTech helps

SoilTech opens the soil so roots can grow deeper and build a healthier system, and it moves sodium down below the root zone so real nutrients are available again. The result: less compaction, fertilizer that works harder, and turf that stays greener longer. The full mechanism is here →

A lawn care customer once told one of our operators he didn’t want to try SoilTech — he’d read online that “liquid aeration” is a hoax that doesn’t work. It’s a fair concern, and the answer is worth spelling out, because most of what’s sold as liquid aeration deserves the skepticism.

What most “liquid aeration” products actually are

Nearly every product marketed for soil compaction is a surfactant, penetrant, or wetting agent. They all do essentially one thing: lower the surface tension of water so it soaks into hard ground more easily. The soil gets wet, water moves in, and it’s easy to assume the compaction is gone. It isn’t — you’ve moved water around, not changed the soil.

What actually relieves compaction

To truly relieve compaction you have to change the soil’s structure — get small, loose particles to bind back into larger aggregates with pore space between them. Amendments like sand can do it mechanically; SoilTech does it chemically. Surfactants and wetting agents give short-term relief but never fix the underlying structure.

Where SoilTech is different

SoilTech is a blend of polyelectrolytes and organic acids — not a surfactant or a wetting agent, and not in the same category as those products. Wetting agents are genuinely useful for certain jobs in turf management; they just don’t relieve compaction. SoilTech does, by rebuilding the structure itself. That’s the difference. See exactly how it works →

Found a great article today about soils and ants, yes ants.  I posted it on our twitter page (@soiltec) with the caption saying “SoilTech taking a cue from the insect world, or is it the other way around..?”.  In the article, scientist tested the soil that ants bring up from the ground or in other term, the soil of their ant hill.  The aggregates made by the ants when it takes a bite while digging and then deposits on the surface is some really good soil.  Also, the digging of the ants itself, helps increase soil moisture due to the water being able to penetrate into the soil more easily and further.  Basically what the ants are doing is exactly what SoilTech is doing to your soil, albeit on a larger scale but SoilTech will give these results on a larger area of your yard.  So either bring hundreds-of-thousands of ants to your customers yards to help with their poor soils or provide them SoilTech!

https://www.soils.org/discover-soils/story/making-mulch-ado-ant-hills

One of our last blog posts was about a comprehensive test of SoilTech by ISTRC, and one of those tests measured root growth. The test was performed over a short period of time and a reader, Sean, asked about what SoilTech would do over a longer period of time.  So thanks to Sean for bringing this up and we do have some data on what SoilTech will do to root growth over time.

We will start off with a test the inventor did and you can find that test by clicking here which is a root growth and tensity test.  This test took it’s data over an almost 6 month timeframe.  The results are very impresive but as Sean asked, what about an even longer period of time?  Well, we have a case study that we did on root depth done on a baseball field.

For this test we took multiple soil cores in the area where we would be applying SoilTech and checked to see what the average root depth was (the average was 1.8 inches).  Then we applied SoilTech and waited 11 weeks and found that the average root depth had increased 166% and reached down 4.8 inches.  Then we pulled samples 46 weeks (6 weeks shy of a year) after the applying SoilTech and got amazing results.  The root depth had increased 605% from where it started and reached down an average of 12.7 inches!  Did we have a control, yes we did.  An area that got the same fertilizer and irrigation, just 40 feet away, after 46 weeks had an average root depth of 3 inches.  That test (which is below) pretty conclusively shows that SoilTech opens up the soil and allows the roots to grow much deeper.  

Healthy Roots…Healthy Lawns! 

So it’s been awhile or a long while since we last posted but that’s about to change.  We are getting back to writing blogs and talking about, of course SoilTech, but also about lawn care and the industry.

In the next couple of blogs, we are going to cover the testing we have done on SoilTech and that are listed on our research webpage.  There are explanations of each test but we are going to explain a handful of them a bit more.  The first one we are going to discuss is from ISTRC or the International Sports Turf Research Center, and done at the Belmar Golf Course in Norman, OK.  This test has a lot of parts to it since it tests for several different aspects.  Each one of those aspects correlate to the benefits of using SoilTech, but in a quantifiable way.

To see the full test, click here

Bulk Density: The bulk density test is, as the names implies, is the density or how much of something is packed into a given volume.  In this case, how many grams of soil are in one cubic centimeter and is a general test of how compacted a soil is.  The higher the number, the more soil is compacted into the cubic centimeter or how compacted it is.  SoilTech reduced the bulk density by 18.3%, not a high number but as you will see this isn’t the most important number. 

Infiltration Rate:  A lot better test to see how compacted soils are, the more water that can get through the soil the less compact it is.  Remember that at the end of the day, a low infiltration rate is the cause of most issues associated with compacted soils.  One example is standing water in an area of your lawn after a rain.  SoilTech increased the infiltration rate from .02”/hour to .12”/hour or a 500% increase, and over time and repeated treatments that number will get higher.

Capillary and Non-Capillary Pores:  These tests are at the heart of what SoilTech does to the soil, creating porosity.  The different types of porosity that SoilTech creates are capillary and non-capillary.  Capillary pores are long contiguous channels in the soil, going from the surface down into the soil and typically carrying water.  Non-capillary pores don’t connect to other pores in the soil and are more like pockets in the soil that hold oxygen and other gases need for the roots but also soil microbes.  SoilTech increased capillary and non-capillary pores 50% and 32% respectively. 

Total Porosity:  To build on the last test, total porosity is exactly what the name implies, the total amount of pores in the soil.  SoilTech increase the total porosity from 35% to 47%, increasing the amount of pores in the soil by 35% is a lot.  That means roughly, that 1/3 more water, nutrients, and oxygen, to name a few are getting into the soil. 

40cm Water Holding Capacity:  This test and the next one are the by-product of increasing porosity.  40cm water holding capacity test, tests to see how much water the soil will hold down to the 40cm level.  The ability to receive and hold more water is a direct function of porosity, and SoilTech increased the capacity by 63%.   

Root Mass:  When the soil is “loosened-up” it makes it easier for roots to grow deep into the soil, but they also need a reason to grow deeper.  If water is not making it far into the soil, roots will stay shallow where the water is.  If the water is able to penetrate further into the soil, the roots will follow that water down.  When SoilTech opens the soil up by increasing porosity and allowing the water to penetrate deeper, the roots grow deeper.  For this test the average root depth went from ¼” to ½” or a 100% increase, but if we went back a year later I assure you it would be deeper.

Hopefully that shines a bit more light on this test and all the individual tests that are in it.  We will continue to discuss other tests in more depth, but also more general soil topics in the future. 

Here at Soil Technologies we always like to say “Healthy Soils, Greener Grass” since everything starts, literally, from the ground up.  If your soils have the right ratio of water, air, and soil, proper nutrients, and abundant microbial activity, you can grow anything.  And of course SoilTech soil amendment is certainly a tool that you can use to achieve that.

There is another aspect to what healthy soils bring, a healthy environment.  The link below goes to an article from one of my favorite websites, and one you will see a lot of on our blog posts, Science Daily.  The title is “Key to cleaner environment may be right beneath our feet” and I couldn’t agree more.  The article gives us a reminder that the soil is much more than the medium that we grow plants in but it is a filtration system for much of the water we use.  Up to 60% of the fresh water on the planet is stored in the soil and aquifers, and the reason it is so clean is due to the soil.

So remember healthey soils will not only give you greener grass but also clean water too.

Article Link:  http://soiltech.co/cleansoils