Part 3

MAKING THE LAWN

Making the lawn. The making of a good lawn depends on the making of a proper foundation. A deep soil such as will make a good vegetable garden is ideal for the lawn.

If the land is very light and sandy, stable manure or other vegetable matter must be introduced. The soil can hardly be too rich or too good for a good lawn.

In a wet situation drain tile, the porous agricultural kind, must be put in to take off surplus water and help aerate the land.

With a proper foundation the surface must be broken up, pulverized, leveled, smoothed and raked over until all large bits of rubbish, pebbles, stone, and other foreign matter have been removed. This will result in the making of a good seed bed in which the seed may be sown.

The surface need not be flat like the top of a table, a rolling contour, indeed, gives a more natural sweep.

Buy the best grass seed that the dealers offer and buy it by weight, twenty pounds to the bushel. In making a new lawn use five bushels to the acre. When subsequent applications of top dressing are made each year, one to two bushels to the acre may be used. Some people prefer to use three bushels to the acre in making a new lawn which, while it will produce a lawn, leaves the way open for weeds and does not give so fine a texture to the grass.

Kentucky blue-grass is the recognized lawn grass. It, alone, has that desirable blue-green color that gives a perfect lawn. It is slow to germinate and to establish itself, therefore the practical gardener uses a mixture containing other grasses in order to establish a greensward quickly, while the blue-grass is developing; and where the proper soil conditions prevail—alkalinity—the blue-grass will eventually crowd out most other grasses.

Each seedsman has his own particular formula for his lawn mixture. In practice they differ in detail but not in principle, and generally contain about thirty per cent. Kentucky blue-grass, thirty per cent. Red-top, and the balance being made of meadow fescue, crested dog-tails, English rye, and perhaps a few other grasses, varying according to circumstances.

The rye grass germinates in a few days and quickly gives a green appearance to the new lawn.

Kentucky blue-grass must have an alkaline soil. Rhode Island bents and meadow fescue are suited to acid and seaside soils.

The actual use of mixtures is a much debated question and may vary in different places; and in practice the lawn maker will be well-advised to take the highest grade lawn mixture offered by reliable seedsmen. These mixtures are varied in their composition somewhat for shaded places or for clay soils, and rather than make these different mixtures themselves, the lawn maker would be better advised to place reliance upon an established seedsman and use the branded mixtures which are the result of long experience and observations.

For the information of those who may desire to make their own mixtures, or have them made up to order, the following proved formulas are given:

On soils of average fertility and composition, this has given satisfaction:

Kentucky Blue 10 quarts Rhode Island Bent 8 quarts English Rye 3 quarts

This is a crude, although reliable mixture. Indeed, it may be called a lawn mixture reduced to its simplest elements. The quantities given in quarts are based on thoroughly recleaned seeds.

A more refined mixture, including a fancy Red-top for filling in during the early years of the lawn and after the English Rye has lived its life, is as follows:

Fancy Kentucky Blue-grass 10 lbs. Fancy Red-top 4 lbs. R. I. Bent 3 lbs. English Rye 3 lbs.

This formula is expressed in weight and may be used as a fair basis of comparison with the preceding formula which is expressed in bulk.

This mixture would give twenty pounds to the bushel, and would be sufficient for one-fifth of an acre, say about eight thousand square feet. Fancy seed is specified in the formula both as regards the blue-grass and the red-top. The twenty pounds weight of this mixture, designated in the trade as a bushel, would, of course, not fill the actual measured bushel.