42 Landscape Gardening 



borders. This enables the machine to take all of the grass 

 clean and leaves nothing for the grass-hook to cut. (See 

 Specimen Lilac.) (Fig. 134, p. 238). 



DRESSING AND RENEWING THE LAWN 



Frequent dressings of fine compost or special fertilizers 

 in the fall or spring are necessary to keep any lawn in good 

 condition, and especially if on poor soil or under the shade 

 of large trees, whose roots take up the plant-food in the soil 

 with great rapidity. 



Covering the lawn with coarse manure in the fall, to lie 

 more or less exposed to view, is very objectionable and 

 unnecessary, as a fine compost is equally effective in pro- 

 ducing good growth and gives off no offensive odors. Quickly 

 soluble fertilizer, like nitrate of soda, sulphate of ammonia, 

 muriate or sulphate of potash, and acid phosphate may be 

 used in limited quantities — from 100 to 200 lbs. per acre 

 on an established lawn; but on a new one these salts cannot 

 be safely used unless thoroughly mixed with the soil some 

 time before seeding. Fine-ground bone, fine fish, cotton- 

 seed meal and basic slag in place of the nitrates may be 

 safely used under any conditions with no fear of injury to 

 the roots or leaves of the young grasses. In place of acid 

 phlsphate, basic slag may be used 400 to 800 lbs. per acre. 



Special lawn-fertilizers, manufactured by nearly all of the 

 large fertilizer-dealers, are composed of materials well suited 

 to make a rapid growth of lawn-grasses, but the same 

 elements used in their unmixed condition will cost very 

 much less and give equally good results. 



The quickly soluble fertilizing-materials, i.e., salts of 

 ammonia, soda, and potash, should be sown just as growth 

 is beginning in the spring, while the less soluble, i.e., bone, 

 fish, cotton-seed, basic slag, etc., may be sown in the fall or 

 during the winter. 



