CARE OF LAWNS

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 121, 15 February 1935, Page 18

CARE OF LAWNS

Need For Top-Dressing Something must be done now to help the lawn to recover from the gruelling summer it has experienced, and which has left it in a very sorry state—browned, patchy, and with many of the best grasses' weakened if not actually destroyed. A nourishing top-dressing is not only helpful, but absolutely necessary in the case of the majority of lawns this year, if they are to be brought back to their former good health. Topdressing without, a little preliminary work would be wasted, though. The topdressing material could not work down through hard-baked soil, and it cannot bring life back to those scarred and bare patches where anyone can see the turf has been quite killed.

With water restrictions yet in force, there is still very little that can be done to satisfy the thirst of the parched roots, but if the utmost efforts are made to break up the hard surface crust, the night and morning dews, now heavier, will be able to penetrate, advantage can be taken of every little shower, and, equally important, air can be allowed access to the roots to counteract the souring tendency of any watering ivith bath and kitchen waste which may have been done. You must, then, go all over the lawn methodically with a sharp-pronged garden fork, and thrust it in here, there and everywhere, until it is speckled with holes. Alternatively, use a rake to scratch and score the surface, and follow up with a vigorous brushing, using the stiff ends of a birch broom. This treatment will, in addition to scratching out moss, free the grass blades and crowns of choking accumulations of dust, and bring to light an amount of debris which ought to be removed.