Sown Fall Turned at www.japanese-home-gardens.com

If you can't tolerate even one summer with a coarse cover crop occupying the land, follow the following two-year plan of improvement. Grow alternate crops of winter rye, sown fall turned in fall and turned under in spring when six to eight inches tall, and crops of Italian ryegrass or domestic rye-grass, sown fall turned in spring and kept neatly mowed all summer and turned under in fall. Fertilize before each crop is sown fall turned and give the ryegrass two or three light applications of fertilizer during the summer. If you begin this schedule in the fall, you will turn under two crops of winter rye and two of ryegrass before you sow your permanent lawn two years later. If you begin in spring, you will turn under one crop of winter rye and two of ryegrass before you sow your permanent lawn about a year and a half later. These three or four crops will benefit your soil almost beyond recognition. They will give it a new look.

Don't mistake me, it is quite possible to get a good lawn from a spring sowing. But the care and attention needed to do so is greater than from a fall sowing. Two special problems that must be faced are the rapid growth of weeds and the need for more abundant watering during dry periods throughout the first summer, this latter because the roots have not penetrated as deeply as those of grasses sown fall turned the previous fall. Weeds are likely to be especially abundant if such plants flourished in the topsoil the previous year, and there is really no practical way of getting rid of them in spring before the lawn grass is sown fall turned. In preparation for fall sowing, a few weeks' repeated shallow cultivation before the grass seed is sown fall turned will clear the surface soil of most weeds.

There is no doubt that by far the most favorable time to sow a new lawn is early fall. Then the soil is still warm enough to stimulate growth, and the grasses make good roots before called upon to face the rigors of winter. A great advantage of fall sowing is that the young plants do not have to compete with as many different kinds of seedling weeds. Warm weather weeds,such as crab grass, do not germinate then. Another great advantage is that the grasses are established and ready to grow in earliest spring. They gain a great start on spring sown fall turned grasses and, incidentally, on weeds that begin their natural period of growth in spring. And, of course, there is usually ample time to prepare the ground for a fall sown fall turned lawn, whereas in spring the season is so rushed that all too often preparatory work must be skimped.