Community lawns mirror a town, reflecting local pride. The lawns around the churches, hospitals, and schools, as those in public squares, traffic circles, along roadsides, are ever on display.
The townspeople use these lawns constantly and enjoy the sight of the cool green carpet every day. Visitors, too, use and enjoy these lawns, for they surround the most frequently visited community sites and border the most frequently seen parts of the community.
Yet in many towns, the community lawns are not cool green well-kept carpets but sparse patches of ill-kept turf which do not reflect the townspeople’s pride in the appearance of their town.
Civic Adventures in Lawn Care
It’s not that no one cares about civic adventures in lawn care. It’s just that the community lawns are seldom anyone’s major responsibility. Instead, the janitor mows the school grounds inexpertly, whose main responsibility is the school buildings.
Very likely, he has no training in lawn tending and no inclination to add lawn fertilization to his tasks.
As a result, most churches seem haphazardly tended outdoors, the church members forgetting that a little lawn sprucing would buoy the whole decorative theme.
But you, the home gardeners who read Flower Grower, are civic-minded about your gardening. You are disturbed if your community lawns are not the velvety carpets they could be.
Both your neighborliness, nurtured in gardening discussions over the back fence with your neighbors, and your pride in a gardening job well done, as evidenced by your gardens and lawns, are troubled by the lackluster condition of the community lawns.
You want to do something about the lawns.
But community lawns can’t be cared for in the same way or intensity as a private lawn. Funds are inadequate; people just don’t have time.
Realizing this, you are stumped. So you remark to your neighbor:
“Sure, the lawns around the school and the Civil War monument look bad, but how can we improve their looks? We don’t have time to care for them as we do our lawns.”
Maintenance of Community Lawn
Maintenance of community lawns is not difficult or prohibitively time-consuming. The first step in such a program is to muster a group of citizens who will be responsible for directing the program.
Your local garden club and other civic groups can become the nucleus of this community project. (In many towns, of course, projects of this sort have already been initiated by garden clubs or other civic groups.)
When you have formed your committee and enlisted volunteers to help with the work, investigate the condition of the community lawns.
Most community lawns have at least a scattering of good grasses worthy of preservation and encouragement. Thus the problem becomes one of upgrading such a lawn and, afterward, maintaining it in good condition without costly skilled help.
Two steps are especially important anywhere in the bluegrass belt this season: bolster seeding and fertilization.
Bolster Seeding
A bolster seeding need not be heavy and thus is not expensive. For example, blue-grass-based mixtures generally average two million seeds to the pound; at the usual price for well-packaged seed, this averages out to something on the order of five one-hundred-thousandths of a cent per seed.
One bluegrass seed can form a plant that, in a year, will spread to encompass an area the size of a saucer.
Where is there a better bargain for improving the appearance of your community?
It is extremely difficult to distribute seed lightly and uniformly; some extra seed makes inexpensive insurance.
Good wheeled spreaders can accurately scatter as little as 1 pound per 1000 square feet. (Spreaders can be rented or borrowed.)
If the seed is to be sown by hand, it may be advisable to bulk it to at least double volume by thoroughly mixing it with some inert material of similar weight and texture, such as corn meal, sifted dry soil or sand, pulverized corn cobs and vermiculite.
This will provide sufficient volume for easy handling without wasting seed.
Before sowing, ensure debris has been raked off the lawn surface. The tiny seeds must reach the soil to anchor permanent roots. Perched on the top of old leaves, the seedlings will not become established.
(The seed will sprout if sufficiently watered even though it does not reach the soil.) Any scuffing of the soil surface—for instance, with a sharp-tined rake—will help catch and hold seed and should certainly be done.
However, be careful not to damage or pull up the good grass.
What Kind of Grass?
Community lawns should be sown in reasonably attractive turf grasses, yet ones able to go it alone much of the time.
Extremes in the grass are well avoided: at one extreme, those requiring high-level care, such as bent grass in the North and top strains of Bermuda in the South; at the other extreme, the coarse, unkempt “hay grasses,” which so often produce impermanent grass and are usually an ingredient of cheap lawn-seed mixtures.
Kentucky bluegrass and red fescue are better for cooler, humid climates, perhaps centipedes and common Bermuda for southern locations.
The roadsides in the bluegrass country show that these species can withstand adversity; abused by traffic, signed with summer drought, they rebound a brilliant green at first rains and cool weather of autumn.
Fine fescues persist year after year on impoverished soils in full shade. Southern Bermuda, scorched brown by drought, recovers to complete verdancy in a matter of weeks.
Through the years, these basic grasses have proven themselves companions to man on lawns receiving little or no care.
Avoid Using Weed Killers
Weed killers should not be used at seeding. In northern states, where seeding is best accomplished by the end of August, there may no longer be enough time to kill the weeds, then wait two or three weeks for safety before sowing.
In middle latitudes, where seeding in early September still gives sufficient time for the good autumn establishment of bluegrass, 2,4-D to eliminate broadleaved weeds or DSMA to brown back crabgrass may still be permissible.
With 2,4-D, the weeds will simply curl and wither, probably leaving voids where the bolster seeding can strike roots.
If crabgrass is thick, as it is especially apt to be in the Ohio Valley belt, it may be necessary to work the seed down through the crabgrass remains.
In this climatic zone, dead crabgrass might well be left in place as a mulch; at Busch Stadium in St. Louis, it was noted that a bluegrass overseeding became established much more quickly under the protective mulch of dead crabgrass than on bare soil.
Applying Fertilizer
You need not be so cautious when applying fertilizer. Seed can be sown mixed with granular fertilizers.
A wheeled spreader is again recommended; with this timesaving machine, seeding and feeding can each be done more precisely.
Fertilizer will not harm dormant seed. Before the seed sprouts, sufficient water will have been applied through sprinkling or rainfall to wash the seed coat free of damaging fertilizer salts. The fertilizer will then be in the soil, ready to spark rapid seedling growth.
It may be interesting that at the Better Lawn and Turf Institute test grounds, generously fertilized sods produced double the number of blue-grass shoots and about double the weight of stems with roots as sods not fertilized.
Over most bluegrass belts, it is hard to imagine overfertilization in autumn. Ten to 20 lbs. of the older soluble or organic fertilizers per 1,000 square feet is recommended. Apply double this rate of the newer slow-acting types based largely upon urea form nitrogen.
The better fertilizers for lawns are high in nitrogen since grass feeds largely on this leaf-making ingredient.
A nitrogen-phosphorus-potassium proportionment of 3-1-1 or 3-2-1, such as a 20-10-5 formulation, should be chosen.
Most lawns benefit from a complete fertilizer, but if heavy phosphate and potash applications have been made in the past or if a soil test shows a high amount of these present, a nitrogenous material alone may be used.
There are several brands of fertilizer today designed specifically for turf grass. These should be chosen in preference to those fertilizers commonly used for crops or garden flowers and fruit rather than leaf production.
Seeding and Feeding
The two steps—seeding and feeding—are “musts” in refurbishing a poor community lawn. However, both may be handled as community projects.
A crowd of volunteers directed by someone with some experience in lawn care can complete both projects in a short time.
If everyone brings a rake, and a spreader or two is rented or borrowed, the only expense will be grass seed and fertilizer. And it can almost be guaranteed that everyone will have fun.
If time, budget, and enthusiasm permit, there are additional practices that encourage quick sprouting and good establishment.
One is a light mulch on thin turf or bare patches to protect the seeds from drying out.
A thin scattering of sphagnum moss might serve as a sifting of compost that is free of weeds.
Another is frequent light sprinkling so the soil surface remains humid until the seedlings are green and an inch or so high.
Mowers
Mowers should be checked for sharpness and adjustment so that they will not tear new seedlings loose.
It is probably most convenient to continue mowing at the usual height of Kentucky bluegrass over most of its range, preferably at least 1” to 2” inches.
Intensively managed lawns or those in cooler, more northern climates can withstand a closer clipping height than those in Tennessee, where 3” inches might be preferable.
Crabgrass
Cresses, dandelions, and chickweeds may have volunteered by next spring. As spring warms, 2,4-D or 2,4,5-TP would be a good cure for these bad actors.
By late spring, crabgrass might be a threat. Some crabgrass herbicides are applied to the soil to catch crabgrass as it sprouts; others are used after the seedlings show.
If fertilizer is applied generously in autumn and again in early spring, blue grass should be sufficiently thick to discourage much weed competition.
A tight turf mowed reasonably tall intimidates crab grass; note how crabgrass never grows in the shade of tree, house, or thick turf.
Pathways
There may be a pathway or hard use problems on community lawns. No grass can withstand excessive wear; the only help is to intensify maintenance where bare areas threaten. Pathways should be discouraged by shrub barriers or by installing walkways at shortcuts.
Benches can probably be moved from place to place to lessen continuous trampling. However, should the soil become thoroughly compacted, it might be necessary to loosen it by spiking or by hiring a lawn service with aerifying equipment.
In summary, choose good seed, stressing not cost per pound but quality. It is more economical to sow “expensive” mixtures high in bluegrass and red fescue than chaffy cheap mixtures of impermanent ryegrass or clumping tall fescues.
Fertilize Lawn
Fertilize the lawn without fail. And be generous. A combination of good seed and plenty of plant food is the best assurance for a thick turf next spring.
Autumn is nature’s best grass-starting season and will take care of other vital details.
Maintenance of good-looking community lawns is not difficult. Because community lawns mirror a town, reflecting local pride, and because they are used and enjoyed by both townspeople and visitors, they should be well-kept, green, and pleasing to the eye.
So call out the volunteers! Muster the rakes, seed, and spreaders! August is the month for community lawn projects.
44659 by Dr. Robert W. Schery