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Lawns—Fertilizing. The maintenance of lawns consists offertilizing, rolling, watering, and mowing in order to keep the turf insuch condition that few if any weeds will have an opportunity to flour-ish. Fertilizing of a lawn is perhaps one of the most importantitems of its maintenance, for the reason that few lawns are so wellprepared when first made that they do not begin to need additionalfood material during the second or third year after making. It isdifficult to convince those who are developing lawns for the first timethat money expended in the proper preparation and fertilization of agood depth of topsoil will do away with the subsequent annual expensenecessary to keep a lawn, not correctly prepared when originally made,in the best condition. A good turf requires food in the form of ferti-lizer, and this food supply must either be provided at the time the lawnis made or it must be constantly applied from year to year afterward(See Page 53). Much thought, labour, and money are wasted in puttinga mulch on lawns, only to come back later and cast it away again.It may be wise to mulch a lawn in the fall, but there is more than aneven chance that if the area is covered with fresh manure, weeds will beintroduced and this will more than offset any real value derived fromthe mulch. The use of manure as a top-dressing for lawns should bediscouraged unless used in the form of a completely decomposed compost.A thick coat of manure is apt to stifle the grass. Lawns should neverbe mulched with manure during the spring unless with thoroughlyrotted manure applied not later than early March. All mulchingor top-dressing should be done preferably in the fall so that the weedseeds are killed to a great extent during the winter. It is practically |
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