Making a Lawn

by Luke Joseph Doogue

For ordinary purposes the half-inch size of hose is the best. It costs less in the first place, is more easily handled,

and the wear and tear is much less than on the larger sizes.

You never see a gardener using any spraying contrivance on the end of a hose. In his thumb and forefinger, which he skillfully moves over the flowing stream, he has a combination of sprayers that can produce the heaviest stream or the finest mist at will. This is to be recommended, but few will care to follow the course of training necessary to acquire the efficiency of the gardener.

WEEDS AND OTHER PESTS

EVEN if you paid a thousand dollars a bushel for your grass seed, and then spent as much more on the preparation of your land, you could not, I am sorry to say, escape having weeds.

The thing to do when you have them is to get rid of them, and this is accomplished only by getting right after them with a persistence proportionate to the abundance of the weeds. The knife is the only real weapon for this. After digging out your weeds, sow in grass seed with the idea of making the grass grow so thick that there will be no place for the weeds to creep in. Dandelions and plantains are simple matters that can be handled easily, but where Crab Grass

shows up, there is certainly work ahead to get the best of it. It is a destroyer of the first rank, a veritable pest. It is an annual that seeds itself each year and kills out under the first frost, leaving great bald spaces in the lawn to show where it has been. Even after it has been killed by the frost its baneful influence is not ended, for it has spread broadcast its seeds for the next year's crop.

When you find it, dig it out. It means work and lots of it, but it is the only way to conquer it. Set the blades of the mower low, and after dragging the grass up with a rake, run the machine over it; and this should be done early in the year, before July. There is no weed to equal this as a nuisance.

On newly-made lawns the weeds are easily removed, and they should be carefully watched so as not to allow them to