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Show i How To Prepare Soil i For A Good Lawn " fiv CcviJ Soy The one and only secret in the planting of a good lawn is the v. method by which it is prepared. It does not matter how careful you arc in the selection of the right kinds o grass seed: You can pay a high price for perfect, weed-free seed mixtures, but they CANNOT produce a good turf if the soil is not first properly prepared. Grass roots should be able to penetrate EASILY into the soil to a depth of six inches. For them to penetrate easily it is necessary to prepare a perfect soil medium. Preparing the Soil . . . There are two things that fresh soil must have in the initial preparation. prepa-ration. They are humus and air. ' They are both equally important and equally necessary. To provide the latter air the soil should be 'cultivated at frequent intervals to allow the air, sun, rain, wind and other natural elements to work their magic by promoting the growth and mutiplication of the helpful soil bacteria, without which no.soil can be fertile enough ' to grow good grass. After the soil has been properly leveled, many gardeners plant a crop of potatoes or corn on the 5area. The crop is generally only fair, but the soil is greatly benefited bene-fited and, after a couple of years, its condition is much improved. A much better method is to plant one or more green manure crops. The system is simple. A suitable and inexpensive crop is grown, when it is thick and heavy, it is spaded into the soil, where it will decompose and provide many tons of valuable humus which is necessary neces-sary for the production of a good grass turf. A third and much quicker method meth-od is to procure peat moss, black peat soil, leaf mold or rotted manure. ma-nure. Spread it thickly two or three inches deep and spade it in. Applying Peat Moss . . . Of all the materials that are available, the only one which is quite weed-free and always available avail-able for immediate use is peat moss (sphagnum). After the existing soil has been worked and properly leveled, the peat moss should be spread (wet) over the area to a depth of three inches. It then should be thoroughly thor-oughly MIXED with the soil to a depth of at least six inches. Spading and cultivating are both methods often used, bu when this work is done the peat moss must neither be left on top nor turned underneath. It must be mixed thoroughly. One of the best ways to do this is to hire a ROTOTILLER. -An ordinary-sized lawn only takes a couple of hours to cover properly and this Rototiller method is the best and quickest method of mixing mix-ing the peat moss and the soil. Plant food should be spread over the peat moss so that it may also be thoroughly incorporated in the top six inches of the soil. It is necessary to use a sufficient suffic-ient application of grass plant food on two separate occasions: (1) When the peat moss and soil are property mixed at the time the seed bed is prepared 1 pound to each 25 square feet. (2) As soon as the grass plants commence to grow even before the grass is cut 1 pound to each 50 square feet. Properly Blended plant foods are aboslutely necessary to supplement supple-ment what is available from the soil. Your favorite brand of commercial com-mercial lawn fertilizer should be spread over the whole area at the rate of one pound to each twenty-five twenty-five square feet about four weeks before the seed is planted. It should be scattered evenly and raked into the surface soil. Since the most important function func-tion of supplying plant foods to the grass is to produce a healthy sturdy plant, with plenty of strong roots, all the necessary food elements ele-ments must be included in any fertilizer fer-tilizer used. Grass roots are continually con-tinually being replaced. If there is not enough of the necessary elements ele-ments to do this, an inferior root growth will be the inevitable result. re-sult. Poor roots spell poor grass in a short time, so plan to feed the roots by the use of a properly balanced bal-anced plant food which contains every one of the necessary elements ele-ments in their correct proportions. Two materials that will greatly assist the fertility of the soil are lime and charcoal. Both of them will do their part in keeping the soil "sweet" if mixed deeply when the ground is prepared. The charcoal char-coal absorbs detrimental soil acids and thus assists the plant foods to do a better job of plant feeding over a longer period. The lime will not only provide necessary calcium for soil sweetening and feeding the grass plants, but will also release many other plant foods that are present in the soil. |