Part 2

The only limit of weight of a roller that shall be used is the convenience of the person working it; in other words, the heavier the better. In actual service a three hundred pound roller is about the limit of a strong man’s capacity, but a thousand pound weight would not be too heavy for the welfare of the lawn. The further advantage of the heavy roller is that apparently it prevents the establishment of the Crab Grass. A new lawn will need more rolling in its early stages than an old lawn.

Top dressing before rolling is useful in two ways; first, in helping to fill irregularities of the surface so as to restore a perfectly level stretch, and secondly, in actually carrying food supplies to the growing plants.

This top dressing may consist of finely sifted garden soil into which some bone dust has been mixed in the proportion of about four to one. This mixture may be lightly scattered over the surface by taking a shovelful at a time and distributing it by a broad sweep and then rolling it in where it falls.

Proper watering of the lawn is one of the least understood things in its upkeep if we would judge of general results seen in our suburban districts. The truth is that too many people approach the question of watering from the point of view of the picture a sprinkler makes rather than an understanding of the needs of the plants and their growing demands.

There is one simple guiding principle to be borne in mind whenever watering a lawn is considered. When water is given let it be given in sufficient quantity to literally give a thorough soaking. Too much emphasis cannot be put on this fact. Mere sprinkling which dampens the surface is not watering, and no matter how charmingly delightful the delicate spray of water glistening in the sunshine may be to the onlooker, it is in fact training the plants into a bad habit.

Of course, watering can be done by the sprinkling plan if one has assurance that sufficient water is allowed to flow—if the sprinkling arrangement is allowed to stand sufficiently long in one place to absolutely soak the surface over which it plays.

Light sprinklings have a tendency to draw the roots of the plants upward in their search for moisture and when such watering is done early in the season and the season itself is dry, the plants so treated fall easy victims to a spell of hot sunshine during midsummer drought.

There can be no calendar of watering, no time-table on which to work. Watering the lawn, as in all other garden operations, is a matter of adjustment to conditions. It will vary with the soil, with the sub-soil, and with the situation. It may be necessary to begin watering in April some years, but in others it will hardly be necessary to water at all.

All surface sprinklings do, however, accomplish something; in that they check transpiration of water from the grass leaves and from the surface of the ground for a short time, and in that way sprinkling in very hot weather may be palliated but must be followed up as soon as possible by an application of water that will be thorough in every sense of the word.

The lawn made on a well prepared soil will not need as much water as one made on a poor soil or one that is of insufficient depth. A lawn perfectly prepared, made on good soil, of good depth, and not unduly drained should hardly need water at all; but the fact is that most of us have to take our lawns as we find them and on light shallow soils watering is a real necessity.

When water is supplied by the hose remove the nozzle, lay the open end of the hose on the ground, and allow the water to flow freely in one spot about an hour. Be careful that there is not too much pressure. If there be any danger of the flow of water wearing a channel into the soil place a piece of board on the lawn, laying the open end of the hose on this to distribute the water. When the lawn does need water give it day or night or both.

There is no real foundation for the fear sometimes expressed of watering in the sunshine. The only possible injury that could result is a slight burning of some of the tender tips through the sun’s rays being focused through pendant drops of water as in a burning glass. But such injury would not be any more noticeable than the browning and shrivelling of the cut edge of a blade of grass that occurs whenever the lawn mower is passed over it and that is so small as to be hardly recognizable in ordinary circumstances. Water whenever and wherever it is needed. Better the welfare of the entire plant than the temporary welfare of an individual leaf!

As the lawn ages its food supply must be maintained. Obviously, the right way to keep the lawn green is to so make it in the first place that it has all its necessary stock of food in the soil for a number of years; but surface dressings may be used to maintain growth. Corn cannot be expected from an unfed land and yet corn land is cultivated annually. Grass is a permanent crop enduring for many years and really needs richer feeding than the vegetable garden. But does it get it? It does not, because of the tendency of weak humanity to take a chance on the present and defer trouble as long as possible.

After the lawn is once made it can be fed only through surface dressings and the lighter the soil and more sandy, the greater the demand for fertilizers. On such soils dressings of well decayed stable manure will give better results than anything else. On heavy soils chemical fertilizers are equally satisfactory. The latter have the advantage, and great advantage, of being free from weeds. Stable manure nearly always carries in weed seeds. This top dressing may be put on in the fall as a mulch or it may be spread on any time during winter, even when the ground is covered with snow.

Tobacco stems are often used, and being free from weed seeds, answer the purpose very well. Pulverized sheep manure as sold from the stock yards is also free from weed seeds and may be used with impunity.

Chemical fertilizers are cleaner in appearance and, in fact, have more concentrated food value. Nitrate of soda has long been a standby scattered over the surface of the lawn at the rate of one to two thousand pounds to the acre. (A plot a hundred by twenty-five feet is about a fifteenth of an acre). This may be applied just in advance of a rain or it may be first of all dissolved in water and applied in solution, which is perhaps the more convenient way, using one pound of soda nitrate to forty gallons of water.

Ammonium sulphate, another source of nitrogen, may also be used, and it is the experience of most observers that where chemicals are used better results are obtained by alternating these two chemicals.

In order to keep up the general appearance of the lawn occasional top dressings to fill in depressions or holes may be made any time of the year by good sifted soil from the garden in which some bone meal has been mixed. Lawn seed is then scattered on the surface and the whole rolled or beaten down.

In places where wood ashes are available an excellent lawn fertilizer is at hand and may be used in the same manner as the chemical fertilizers.

Lawns made from the recognized lawn mixtures contain a great quantity of blue-grass, which will not grow on a soil showing an acid reaction. Therefore, wood ashes are valuable because they supply an alkaline element.

Lime, that is, agricultural or slaked lime, two bushels to a plot one hundred by twenty-five, may be used on any lawn and will help to maintain an alkaline soil condition which is essential to the production of that blue-green color of the lawn that is the acme of perfection of lawn color.

Unfortunately, weeds will creep into good lawns and eternal vigilance is needed to keep them in control. On an acid soil we may have a yellow, poor looking lawn without weeds; or a perfect, blue-green, rich looking stretch of grass with weeds, for, curiously, the alkaline condition that makes for good grass also encourages the weed plants.

To suppress them and keep them out requires constant vigilance. Broad-leaved weeds can be destroyed by scattering sulphate of iron, which being caught on the broad, outstretched leaf, practically burns it and in time kills the plant (it does not affect the grass because of the upright habit of growth); but the more satisfactory way is to keep the weeds down by constantly cutting out such things as dandelions and rib-grass, as quickly as they appear, then making good any hole in the surface and reseeding the bare spot. Dandelions can be kept under control by preventing flowering.

Crab-grass, the pest of very many lawns, is an annual, the seeds of which are carried in by means of birds, chiefly sparrows. Where it appears it must be bodily raked up, as the lawn mower will not cut it, since it creeps along on the surface of the ground below the cut level of the well kept lawn. On account of its manner of growth it must be literally grubbed up by a sharp iron rake. Badly infected lawns should be dug over and remade.

The presence of moss on the lawn indicates insufficient under drainage and is to be remedied only by putting in proper drainage. Surface dressings of lime may give temporary relief, but nothing more.

While it is better to dig out rank growing weeds in the fall rather than in the spring, still it is better to do it in the spring than not at all. Constantly reseeding the surface of the lawn with a high grade lawn seed mixture will do much towards keeping out the weeds because of the mathematical fact that two things cannot occupy the same place at the same time. The best way to keep out the weeds is to keep in the grass.

Chick weed is best raked out before it is permitted to flower. It can also be controlled by dusting on sulphate of iron.

Brown patches on the lawn may be produced by different causes; one is a fungus which is on the surface and may be controlled by dusting dry Bordeaux mixture on the affected areas. Another source of the brown patch is the working of an underground grub that cuts through the roots, loosening sheets, as it were, of dead turf which may be rolled up. This grub, when not very severe, can be controlled by gasoline which will kill it in the ground. In very severe cases the lawn must be remade after having been plowed and allowed to stand over one winter open to frost. This grub is a large white, fat, sluggish creature, curved into a crescent shape.