Seed Selection For Your Lawn
When you select seed for your lawn, the main consideration is the exposure to sun and shade your grounds afford. Most commercial blends are adapted to full sun or medium shade. A special blend should be used where there is less than three or four hours of sun-light a day, as under trees, or where soils are dry and poor. In general,heavy grass seed is most free from chaff an dist most economical in the long run, while a cheaper, lighter seed germinates less rapidly.
Kentucky bluegrass is considered the best lawn grass, but there are years when it is in short supply, and it has the disadvantage of needing a resting period in midsummer and,also, of soiling light-colored clothes. It does form a thick turf and it will grow in alkaline or slightly acid soil, resisting weeds to an extent.
For putting-green lawns for a small area on a terrace or in a garden, bent grasses are used. Colonial bent is widely used in mixtures, thriving as it does under less favorable conditions than those required by creeping bent or velvet bent. The bent grasses are low-growing, fast-spreading grasses, needing frequent mowing and top-dress.
Redtop combines well with Kentucky bluegrass because it rests in fall after the bluegrass has recovered, and it does not stain. Chewings fescue is a fine-textured shade grass. Maturing late in the season, the various fescues resist midsummer drought, grow well in acid soil and fight weeds.
For new lawns, rye grass, a perennial, is a tough, quick-growing grass which helps keep out weeds until the lawn is under way.
Bermuda grass is used in the South and the Southwest, where soil is sandy. Whether or not clover is to be used with these grasses is a personal matter. With its white flower and its tendency to grow in patches, it spoils the continuity of the turf, but, on the other hand, it will grow in poor soil, edging out weeds that might grow in these areas.
A mixture of grasses gives better satisfaction than a single species as a rule, because the various grasses are active in development at different seasons. Mixtures stand up against disease and disorders that will attack one grass and leave another alone.
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