268 
PARK AND CEMETERY. 
is uncertain at this time of the year, and 
if the grass does not sprout it will have to 
remain in the ground during the winter to 
come up early in the spring. The partic- 
ular advantage of sowing grass in the fall 
— say between the middle of August and 
until the first of September — is that the 
weed seed that may be in the soil will not 
germinate, and that the grasses that are 
sown come up clean and will obtain suf- 
ficient growth to withstand the most of 
our winters. After the seed has been sown 
and raked or otherwise gotten into the 
soil, then comes the work of germinating 
the seed. The soil should be kept moist 
at all times, especially until the tiny blades 
of grass come through to prevent a crust 
from forming on top of the soil and thus 
prevent the germinating seed from making 
its way. With a good water supply one 
should have the young grass far enough 
along in about two weeks under favorable 
weather conditions to begin weeding. If it 
is started in the spring and it should be 
kept free from weeds the remainder of the 
season, and with a little attention in this 
respect thereafter, a clean lawn can be 
maintained. 
As for renovating an old lawn there is 
but one practical way to proceed, and that 
is to remove the old sod entirely, placing 
it somewhere to decay, and later be used 
for flower beds, or in preparing special 
soil for rhododendrous and other shrubs. 
If the soil is sandy take out at least six 
or eight inches, and fill in its place with 
a good clay loam, which must be well fer- 
tilized, and covered with enough of the 
sandy loam that was removed to sow the 
seed in; and if the soil is found to be clay 
of a good quality, if well fertilized, a good 
result may be obtained. 
J. C. Woodward. 
Mr. Whitaker : What appears to me to 
be impractical would be the removal of 
old sod. I wouldn’t like to undertake that 
myself. 
The President: You don’t generally do 
that work anyhow. You leave that for 
somebody else. 
Mr. Whitaker: I leave it for somebody 
else to do that. Some person suggested 
the idea of scarifying — using a tool called 
a scarifier, a sort of rake, the way I un- 
derstood it — rake it thoroughly and then 
resow and to roll it afterwards. I don’t 
remember who that was but that was the 
understanding I got out of it — to use a 
scarifier and then resow the lawn in that 
condition after being thoroughly raked. 
Mr. Woodward : One thing, gentlemen, 
I would like to make clear to you — it 
depends on the kind of lawn you want 
to make. In our cemetery we probably 
go to the extreme in this particular. We 
take pride. We think it is the finest 
throughout the country. We have a very 
large organization that we train constantly 
on giving attention to the various condi- 
tions. These lawns are watched and weeded 
every day, certain men cover certain areas. 
There are no two lawns alike. When you 
get the individual interest of your organiza- 
tion to apply their efforts on the subject, 
they become students and learn your prob- 
lem, and so I claim that a good lawn comes 
from the ability of those who work for 
you and your ability to get out of them 
their best efforts in bringing up and tak- 
ing care of the lawns. 
Mr. Kern : I would like to ask the 
gentleman his experience at the end of the 
season, when excessive watering has been 
necessary in order to retain the green 
condition during the late summer time — 
what are the results — what condition does 
he find the lawn to be in at the end of 
the season? 
Mr. Woodward : Watering the lawn is 
of course one of the evils. In order to 
keep a green lawn, it is quite a job and 
you have got, of course, to put up with 
a few of the evils. The weeds, of course, 
come from the water absolutely. You 
take an old general care lawn and you 
won’t find near as many weeds as you will 
where you are continually watering, in the 
fall of the season. It depends on the 
kind of seed you have in your lawn, the 
condition of it; with the Rhode Island you 
might sow a little yellow — what as the 
country people calls a plenty of clover in it. 
Mr. Glass: In our cemetery we have 
places where the grass grows up as much 
as an inch or two in one week higher than 
the balance. It seems to grow in a circle 
maybe not more than eight inches wide — 
some places in a circle of eight or ten 
feet. I would like to know what that is 
— a germ or what it is, if anybody knows? 
That grass will be thrifty and grow an 
inch or two higher than the rest of the 
grass around it in a week or two. 
Mr. Kern : I believe I am able to answer 
the question of the gentleman as to what 
causes the contrast of growth and even 
the color of the grass on the lawn in the 
circular form. I am not able to give you 
the name of the object that causes this 
appearance but I am sure and positive that 
it is fungi and ’ mushroom that causes 
that condition. The mushroom is not very 
often visible. Its growth seems to get 
along between the sod, not below the sod 
or above the surface hut right immediately 
above the roots and it is of a rapid growth, 
and the mushroom after it is developed 
lasts but a few hours and it soon decays 
and returns to vegetation again, and that 
is one of the reasons that causes the more 
verdure in your lawns. The mushroom 
may' he causing that. 
Mr. Glass: Now, we have what they 
call the Hunkey mushroom ; they are little 
bits of fellows. We notice they are so 
much thicker there than at other places 
and I wondered if that is where it came 
from. They boh up, little fellows about 
this high. 
Mr. Kern : The decaying mushroom, 
after it decays, fertilizes. 
Mr. Metzger of Wapakoneta: What 
causes mushrooms? 
Mr. Kern : They are different kinds of 
fungi. 
Mr. Metzger : Can anything be done to 
stop these mushrooms from growing? 
The President : Calcium chloride. I 
guess most anybody can tell you what 
to kill them with but what it will do to 
the sod is the next question. It is not 
what we can kill the obnoxious weeds with 
but what we can do afterwards. If it is 
mushrooms, I don’t know anything only 
to eat them. Of course we do have soil 
in our cemetery. If you are talking about 
mushrooms I know there are plenty of 
places, especially around trees that are cut 
down that have life in them, you will 
find these mushroom growths come up and 
blacken after a while and kill the stuff 
that is around them. 
USING WASTE LAND IN CEMETERIES. 
What can be done with the waste land 
in cemeteries? I will make a few remarks 
relative to the use of ravines or hollows. 
They are usually, to some of us, a bug- 
bear. We don’t know what to do with 
them. You possibly haven’t the means of 
doing the heavy grading and filling opera- 
tions to fill up these hollows and ravines. 
Now, the most logical thing to use to fill 
up such places would be to throw dams 
across and fill them with water, that is, 
provided there is an ample supply of water 
to do it with. In the upper part of Spring 
Grove Cemetery we have a ravine extend- 
ing possibly for a mile and a quarter. At 
two points in this ravine it has been in- 
tercepted by fills, and roads thrown across 
it. Of course, each fill forms a dam and 
is the basis for a new lake. At the head 
of this ravine a smaller dam was thrown 
across,' and the upper lake is connected 
with the lower one by a beautiful little 
cataract where the water tumbles down in 
a beautiful cascade effect. And below this 
we have a chain of lakes formed by 
smaller dams. I believe there are four 
of them. As you stand on the first road, 
of which I have spoken, and look down, 
you have a most perfect perspective — a 
chain of lakes, one connected with the 
other, and the perspective is something 
wonderful to behold. The surrounding na- 
tive growth has never been disturbed, and 
its native trees and shrubbery are very 
beautiful. There is nothing more effective 
than to let Nature have her way in mak- 
ing use of such conditions. This is men- 
tioned simply to rerhind some of you what 
can be done with some of the waste places 
you may have in your cemeteries. It does 
not matter how large or how small they 
are, you can apply the idea to these spots 
and create a piece of water. It is always 
effective and it always adds to the attrac- 
tiveness of your cemetery. — Carl E. Kern 
at Ohio Cemetery Convention. 
