Rough Lawns Play Areas-“Meadow Lawns” Special Purposes

The word lawn can and should have more than one meaning for you if you own a fairly large piece of land (perhaps one or two acres or more, depending on the layout). A well-groomed turf is important around the house, but it may not be necessary to give the same pampering to outlying parts of the property. These areas can be quite attractive if kept as a rough-mown meadow. There the grass need be cut only three or four times a year, just often enough to keep scrubby weeds and woody plants from taking over. If seeding is necessary, a rate of 10 to I5 pounds to the acre is ample.

The rough-mown meadow qualifies as a "lawn," even though it does not look exactly like a fine turf. Certainly, unless you have an unlimited pocketbook, a perfect sod several acres in extent is a foolish extravagance. I remember examining a ten-acre tract of perfect creeping bent on an estate owned by one of the Rockefeller clan. It had cost $200,000 to build it and maintain it for five years, the superintendent told me. Even a Rockefeller did not stand such an outlay for long. That estate has been subdivided and not a trace of bent remains.

Easy Meadow Upkeep

A rough lawn needs only minimum care. Oftentimes, if the native grasses are fine leaved and deep rooted, mowing a wild field regularly for a few months will produce a quite satisfactory lawn. A friend of mine who has an eleven-acre place near Chicago has built up a turf of native prairie grasses that is superior to many I have seen seeded to heavy, sun-dried Kentucky Bluegrass. A lawn of native grasses has a big advantage over most lawns made from seeds grown commercially: the native grasses have been subjected to severe weather conditions and exposed to disease and other troubles in the area until, by natural selection, only the best-adapted individual plants are left.

Parenthetically, something that ninety-nine out of a hundred lawn-owners neither know nor understand is that, up to 1946, every species of grass used for lawn purposes was an exotic, from a climate entirely different from that of much of the United States. Until the introduction of Merion Kentucky Bluegrass, Meyer Zoysia and U-3 Bermuda, not a single species of grass sold in commerce originated in the United States.

A thorough discussion of the many cultural practices involved in growing a fine lawn was presented in earlier chapters. However, the rough-mown meadow is one type of lawn which calls for practically no soil preparation and a minimum of maintenance. Usually, all that is needed to convert a grassy field into a fairly good lawn (in addition to occasional mowing) is to fill potholes over one inch deep with loose soil. If the native grasses are vigorous their roots will expand into the fresh soil and establish a good turf without further seeding.

Self-Sufficient

If clippings are allowed to accumulate (not always good practice on fine turf but satisfactory on a meadow-type lawn), there may be no need for fertilizing. True, the sod will be better if given a yearly application of nitrogen, with a small amount of phosphorus and potash (see the chapter on fertilizers), but where cost is a factor, this can be omitted.

The inclusion of clover in a fine-mown turf is now, as previously stated, frowned upon by most experts, but in a meadow lawn it is a great cost-saver. Clovers are capable of extracting nitrogen from the air and fixing it into the soil in a form that grass plants can use. In the South, Ladino Clover or Lespedeza is suitable for this purpose. North of the Ohio River, a small amount of White Dutch Clover will serve. Up to the center of Ohio and Indiana, ladino is also good. The extra cost of the so-called Wild Kent Clover is not justified; I have never been able to see the difference between it and White Dutch in any planting I have observed.

Some argue that if clippings are returned to the sod, all the food they contain goes back into the soil, making clover unnecessary. This argument overlooks the fact that bacteria and fungi, in breaking down the clippings into fertilizer elements, utilize some of the food for their own energy and growth. This fertility is lost to the soil. Hence some feeding, even if light, helps the rough meadow.

There are various grasses which can be used if the area has been in cultivated crops and must be seeded. A pure stand of Dutch or ladino clover in the North or lespedeza or ladino in the South can be beautiful. A major danger is that anthracnose, a fungus disease, may kill out patches in unfavorable weather.

Perhaps the best rough mixture for the North is a combination of Common Kentucky Bluegrass, Redtop and a fine-leaved fescue. If not mowed too closely, redtop is a fairly permanent grass and may reseed itself.

Cash For Sod

For the man in the North who wants some income from his meadow, I can recommend seeding a pure stand of Merion Kentucky Bluegrass. Once it has matured, the sod can be cut and sold at a fancy price. One year, when sod was short, a friend of mine sold the sod from one acre of a rough Merion meadow for $1,500. Even if the sod is sold at wholesale, the income can help pay the taxes.

The cost of rough-seeding Merion is not as high as it might seem. An acre will require 10 to 20 pounds of seed, which should produce a solid stand in two years. This sounds thin (a pound of seed to 2,000 to 4,000 square feet) but that is the rate at which all commercial seed fields are sown in the big grass-seed-producing areas of the Pacific Northwest.

Stripping the sod does not kill the Merion: if only one inch of root-filled soil is taken (standard practice), the underground rhizomes will renew the entire sod in less than a year.

In the South, zoysia can be handled in the same way, but the cost of sprigging will be considerably higher than seeding unless the owner starts with a few yards of zoysia sod and uses this as foundation stock.

Playfield Turf

Sometimes, the owner of a country place wants to use rough turf for recreational purposes, such as baseball, polo, football or golf, or even as a landing strip for a private plane. By far the best grass for this purpose is one of the tall fescues, either Alta or Kentucky 31. These two grasses are indistinguishable, so you can buy the one that costs less in your area.

Both of these fescues are deep rooted and can stand almost any amount of foot traffic. As previously noted, they thrive from Alabama to the Canadian border. When planted as forage crops at 10 to IS pounds to the acre, these fescues produce a coarse rough sod. If, however, they are seeded at the heavy rate of 3 to 5 pounds to 1,000 square feet, the crowding will cause the blades of the grasses to grow much finer and thus they will be hard to tell at first glance from Kentucky Bluegrass. At these seeding rates tall fescues cannot be considered low-cost lawn species.

Hints For Game Areas

Since the advice in this book is based on actual research and experience, I think the following comments will also be helpful. They are practical indications of the grass species that serve well for "game lawns." During the past four years, I have either consulted with or watched the work on the following big sports areas:

Comiskey Park, the Chicago White Sox Stadium: This was to have been converted gradually to Merion Kentucky Bluegrass over a three-year period. But the Merion made the other turf look so poor that the park was completely re-sodded with Merion.

Wrigley Field, the Chicago Cubs Ball Park: This has been completely re-sodded with Merion, too.

Milwaukee Braves Park: Another Merion convert—the result of reports of Merion's success at the two Chicago ball parks as well as at Notre Dame and Michigan State.

Why Merion on all of these busy athletic fields?

First, it is deep-rooted and wears well. What is more, it heals very quickly when injured, due to regeneration by underground roots. Second, while not as fine-bladed as common Kentucky blue-grass, Merion color is better and the finished turf effect is superior. However, Merion should be used for play areas only if it will get good care. If the grass is to be neglected, use either Kentucky 31 fescue or Alta Fescue, as recommended earlier.

Merion is being widely used for tennis courts and golf practice areas. In addition, many golf courses in the Chicago area are installing tees of Merion Bluegrass and find them highly satisfactory. In time, they may replace other materials for this purpose.

For very fine bowling greens, where care can be given, a bent is probably the best grass, but will require constant tending. Merion— cut at 3/4 inch—is next best.

For croquet, bent is too tender; it bruises too easily. Merion or a mixture of Merion and Pennlawn fescue (the latter particularly on drier soils) is a good proposition.

Further Care

On all playing areas, compaction is the greatest single problem, and must be taken into account. Ball parks where both baseball and football are played are the toughest problems of all. The grass gets such constant use that compaction is at maximum, and the time permitted the greenskeeper to renovate the sod is practically nil. Sodding must be used to bring the turf area into a high state of perfection in the shortest possible time. Football is played long after the safe period for sodding in fall, which limits the renovation period from the time the soil dries out in spring to about a month before play begins.

I have checked overseeded play areas that get regular use, and find this operation is usually a waste of effort unless the field lies idle for long periods of time between events.

Because of the need for frequent mowing of the grass to keep it down to playing length, a high level of fertility is necessary. On many of the big league parks, for example, my recommendation is for feeding as much as 6 to 8 pounds of actual nitrogen per 1,000 square feet, using a mixed ureaform fertilizer twice a year—once in early spring and again toward fall to prepare for the football season. This is a 20-5-5 mixture, with half the nitrogen in ureaform, the balance in organics and other chemicals.

Watering is a problem in play areas because wet grass is slippery. This is another reason for the wide acceptance of Merion: It has a relatively low water requirement.

Rough Mowing

For mowing a rough lawn, such as a game area or a meadow around a large country place, I recommend the sickle bar mower. Either self propelled or attached to a tractor, it does an efficient though not-too-smooth job. Here also is a place for the larger-sized rotary mower, particularly the riding type that puts the operator above the cutting blade, away from flying objects.

One of the best of all mowers for the big lawn that does not need a velvet-smooth cut is the type known as the Verti-cut. It resembles a reel-type lawn mower, but instead of blades, it has arms attached flexibly to the drum. They swing around at high speed as the drum revolves. These blades—dozens of them—act like the cutting knives in a hammer mill, slicing and chopping the grass, weeds, etc., as the mower moves along. The way this machine can chew its way through waist-high weeds will endear it to anyone who is faced with the job of cutting down a neglected lawn area. Like the rotary, it leaves behind a fine duff which would be objectionable on quality turf, but on the open meadow (which is seldom fertilized) this duff does not seem to cause trouble.

I have taken this type of mower through ragweed almost head-high; it hardly seemed to hesitate as it ate its way, forming a green ditch through the surrounding weeds. Because of its ability to cut this type of wild, rough growth (including thin woody growth), the Verti-cut mower is particularly useful around the country place.

Sod For Flower Shows

If you take part in spring flower shows, you often are faced with the need for green grass by mid-March. There are two ways to solve this problem. One is to cut sod in late fall, just before freeze-up, and put it in a cold-storage warehouse. It should be held below 32 degrees (most storage houses have a 28-degree room which is just right) until six weeks before the show, when it can be brought into a greenhouse (or a coldframe or hotbed) to develop color.

Easier, and usually better, is the following method: Fill a flat with soil and cover with burlap. Sow seed of Redtop, water thoroughly and place in a greenhouse. Do this fourteen to eighteen days before the show. The grass may need a light cutting to even the tops before it is removed from the flats for laying in the show gardens. If the grass is too light a green, water with a half-strength solution of ferrous ammonium sulfate (see Chapter 4).

Lawns As Skating Rinks

To create an ice-skating rink on a lawn is risky business. It may kill the grass. Sometimes a rink can be made safely by laying down a sheet of polyethylene plastic (the large size used in building construction) and sprinkling this with a hose until the seams are sealed by ice, after which the entire area can be flooded. Applying a fungicide before the area is flooded will help keep snow mold from developing under the plastic or ice.

Lawn Dyes And Tints

A serious drawback to the use of Meyer Zoysia has been its ugly color when it goes dormant in below-freezing weather. Where other hardy grasses gradually lose their summer green and fade slowly with the approach of ` zoysia turns a dead brown almost overnight.

This has been overcome experimentally by the use of lawn dyes and tints which artificially color the dead grass a rich green. The same dyes have been used in areas where grass browns out completely in summer heat, to give the lawn an appearance of freshness during dormancy. A number of golf courses have resorted to the use of such dyes just before tournament play, when all the art of the greenskeeper could not overcome the ravages of summer heat and drought.

I have personally spent considerable time investigating these dyes.

While the idea of artificial coloring is one that I find less than attractive, the need for such a trick in certain situations cannot be ignored.

I have not yet found the perfect material, and recommend that if you use such a product, you first test it thoroughly on an obscure corner of the lawn, to be sure the particular defects of the one selected are not too offensive.

Be sure of the following points:

1. That the color of the dye is a true grass green. Failure to meet this requirement is the objection to about 90 per cent of the products I have tested.
2. That the paint or dye does not rub off on shoes, clothing, golf bags, etc.
3. That the dye color does not fade in bright sunshine or in rain. This point is unimportant if the grass is only being colored for a one-day tournament, but must be taken into account where grass around a home is dyed for winter effect.
4. That the cost is not excessive.
5. That the grass is not injured by the dye.

In an emergency, I have used a green latex paint (Super Kemtone is one product that worked fairly well). I thinned it somewhat with water and sprayed it through a regular tank sprayer.

A dye cannot be looked upon as anything more than a temporary expedient for an emergency when other means of greening up 'turf cannot be used. While a brown lawn in winter may not be attractive, at least it is in keeping with the season, whereas a bright green expanse of turf in January is obviously false.

Green Concrete

Some homeowners, trying to be funny, often say, "I'm going to pave the whole yard with concrete and paint it green."

Anyone who takes this idea seriously is likely to find himself in more trouble than before he did his paving. I have actually seen two such attempts, both of them highly unsatisfactory to the owner.

The first, on the South Side of Chicago, even had holes through the concrete for shrubbery and evergreens. I stopped and talked with the owner, only to learn that his troubles with this novel "lawn" had been so annoying that he was breaking up the concrete and re-seeding. Between cracking concrete, fading paint, wisecracking neighbors and the heat reflected from the hard, unbroken surface of the paving, he was thoroughly sick of his bargain.

The other homeowner perhaps had more reason to resort to paving; he lived in Florida during the 1920's, when a decent stretch of turf was almost impossible to find in the entire state. He had moved South to retire, but felt so nostalgic about green grass around the house that he had spent hundreds of dollars (when a dollar was worth a dollar) trying all sorts of southern turf species in an attempt to find something that would remind him of his old home. In disgust, he finally paved his yard with concrete and painted it green.

He professed to be satisfied, but the effect was ghastly. The paint had faded to a dull pea-green, far from convincing to the naked eye. If he had painted the area red it would have been far more logical: then at least it would have looked like an extension of his house terrace.

Chips Off The Chapter

1. A "putting green" lawn is a beautiful setting around the house, but such perfection is not necessary in the outlying parts of larger-than-average home properties. A rough-mown "meadow lawn" is a sensible compromise for acreage owners.
2. Meadow lawns need little or no upkeep other than mowing.
3. Play areas are just the opposite: if the grass is to remain vigorous it must be tended faithfully.
4. Experiences of professional athletic field operators indicate that Merion is the best play-area grass.
5. The where, when, what, how—and why—of lawn-dyeing products.

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