By February your lawn is as hard as the path beside it. Mower wheels, the dog, kids, a summer of foot traffic and clay that sets like cement — and the result is water that runs straight off instead of soaking in. You water for twenty minutes and the top centimetre is wet while the roots stay dry. Aerating fixes that, and spring is when you do it. These lawn aerator shoes strap over your own boots and put 26 spikes into the ground with every two steps, so the job happens while you walk the lawn instead of hiring a machine.

Why They Stand Out

• 26 spikes, 13 a foot — that's 26 holes every pair of steps, so a normal back lawn takes a walk rather than an afternoon.
• They go over the boots you already own — no sizing to get wrong, no second pair of shoes, straight over work boots or trainers.
• Three straps on each shoe — toe, instep and ankle, all adjustable, which is what stops the plate twisting underfoot as you walk.
• Spikes bolt through the base with a nut each side, so they stay where they're set instead of pushing up through the plate.
• A spanner comes with them — you tighten them once properly and that's it.
• Nothing to hire and nothing to fuel — a manual lawn aerator you keep in the shed and use whenever the ground tells you to, rather than booking a machine for a Saturday.
• Green or black, and they hang on a nail when you're done.

Where to Use Them

• On the back lawn in spring, as the grass comes out of its winter slowdown — the single best time of year to aerate in Australia.
• Down the worn strip between the back door and the clothesline, where the ground is hardest and the grass is thinnest.
• Wherever water pools after you run the sprinkler, which is the lawn telling you exactly where it's compacted.
• Over the front lawn before you fertilise, so what you put down actually gets below the surface.
• Across a patch that stays yellow no matter how much you water it.
• Around the edges of a path or driveway, where the soil gets squeezed hardest.
• Over a new lawn's second season, to keep it from setting hard the way the first one did.

How They Work

1. Your body weight drives the spikes in — the plate spreads the load across 13 points, so a normal step is enough to push them into moist soil.
2. Each hole opens a channel that lets water, air and whatever you've spread get down past the compacted top layer instead of sitting on it.
3. The three straps hold the plate flat to your sole so the spikes go in straight rather than at an angle.
4. The spikes are bolted, not moulded, which means a bent one can be undone and replaced rather than writing off the shoe.

How to Put Them Together

1. Assemble them at the bench, not on the lawn. Twenty-six spikes, each with a nut above and below the plate. Half an hour the first time, never again.
2. Tighten every nut properly with the spanner, then go back and check them all a second time. A loose spike works its way out in the first ten minutes.
3. Thread the three straps and set them to your boots with the shoes on the ground before you stand on them.
4. Water the lawn the day before if it hasn't rained. Dry ground won't take the spikes and you'll spend the walk fighting it.
5. Walk the lawn in overlapping lines, short steps, lifting your foot straight up rather than dragging it forward.
Tip: do it the morning after rain or a long watering. Soil that gives takes the full spike with an ordinary step; soil that's baked takes half of it and leaves you stomping. Same tool, same lawn, ten minutes instead of forty — the timing is the whole job.

NB: these work by walking, so the spikes go in best when the soil has moisture in it — water the day before and the whole thing becomes easy. Spring is the window: the lawn is actively growing and recovers quickly from the holes. Go over the worn and hard patches twice rather than trying to do the whole lawn in one pass, and tighten the nuts before each session.

Care and Maintenance

• Hose the soil off the spikes and stand them spike-up to dry before they go away.
• Check the nuts every time you get them out. They work loose with use and that's normal.
• Store them off the ground, hung on a hook rather than left on the shed floor where you'll stand on them.
• Straighten or swap a bent spike rather than leaving it — one crooked spike makes the whole plate sit badly.

Specifications

What's Included

• 1 pair × Aerator base plates
• 26 × Spikes with nuts and washers
• 6 × Adjustable straps
• 1 × Spanner