ESSENTIAL REQUIREMENTS OF A VELVETY PIECE OF TURF—THE GRASS SEED TO 
BUY AND THOSE TO AVOID—SPRING TREATMENT THAT WILL BRING A SUCCESS¬ 
FUL LAWN THIS SEASON—HOW TO CUT GRASS AND HOW TO SAVE RAKING IT 
Photographs by Nathan R. Graves and others 
W HEN the average man buys a package of grass seed at a 
grocer’s and shakes the aforesaid seed on the ground he 
often imagines that the result will be a velvety lawn that will make 
his neighbors die of envy. But he has reckoned without counting 
that warm weatherwill probably find his seed producing weeds and 
a few lonesome looking blades of grass. It is scarcely an exaggera¬ 
tion to say that eight out of ten peo¬ 
ple hope for grass on their lawns from 
just such thoughtless beginnings. 
If you want grass to grow you 
must make up your mind to work 
for it, week after week, and month 
after month, until a perfect lawn 
is achieved. No absent treatment 
will effect anything short of a 
meadow, but consistent attention 
will produce a turf to be proud of. 
If you have a patch of ground 
that you have been accustomed to 
call a lawn (though you feel shame¬ 
faced every time you call it such, 
by reason of its neglected and bare 
appearance), and if in the spring it 
seems to start off well, only to burn 
out later in spots, while the weeds 
get so numerous that you give up 
in disgust and wait for another 
year, hoping for better things, you 
may be sure that the trouble lies 
with your not having taken the 
time to spend on the matter. As a 
result of this neglect year after year 
you have had a symphony of weeds 
and bare spots. 
Now the nearest thing by way of comparison to a lawn is a 
bed of plants that you set out in your garden every spring. When 
you think it is planting time you go to this bed with spade or fork 
and turn the earth up deep from the bottom, putting in plenty 
of well rotted manure, thus ministering to the soil according to its 
needs. Then you set out the plants, and if weeds grow up you 
dig them out, after which you water 
the spot intelligently. For this labor 
your reward comes to you in the 
shape of an abundance of bloom and 
foliage. 
Just as truly is a lawn a bed 
of plants needing an equal amount 
of treatment. Grass is nothing 
but a collection of thousands of 
little plants crowded together, 
which must have nourishment, and 
from which the weeds must be 
taken. Likewise the soil must be 
given water as it is needed, and the 
earth must be made mellow for the 
roots, to a good depth. It makes 
no difference how much you pay 
for your grass seed, how good or 
bad it is, or what kind of fertil¬ 
izers you use, if the bed is not prop¬ 
erly prepared in the first place. 
Without this fundamental prepara¬ 
tion grass plants will not grow, or 
if they do, will not thrive. 
RENOVATING AN OLD LAWN 
If you have one of these misfit 
lawns, examine the soil, and if you 
It is better not to rake the cuttings from a lawn, for even a 
wooden rake tears the little grass plants from their roots. 
Put a grass catcher, costing about $1.75, on your mower 
(i54) 
