Lawn and lawn grass

"Lawn" - the French word for sod. Usually a lawn is called a piece of land, covered regularly with perennial grasses. Sometimes, in addition to grasses, white clover, periwinkle, flaky turf and some other stunted plants that create a green carpet are used.

Lawn is one of the main elements of modern landscaping. Most often it serves as the main background on which trees, shrubs, and flowers are placed, but can also be an integral part of any of the forms of decorative and floral decoration - flower beds, rabatki, partera. Thanks to the lawn, a perspective is created, as if the boundaries of the site are widened. Trees and shrubs acquire emphasized relief. With its emerald green lawn softens or enhances the colors of flowers, gives the flower garden a neat appearance. Green massifs of lawns have a beneficial effect on the eyesight.

The importance of lawns is not limited to their decorative qualities. Their sanitary and hygienic role is also important. The presence of lawns reduces the dust-forming area, reduces the temperature of the surrounding air, raises its humidity, heals the air due to the phytoncidity of many herbs. The most powerful phytoncidism from herbs is the red fescue. From an economic point of view, a lawn is the cheapest form of gardening.

Taking into account all the positive qualities of lawns, it is necessary to allocate to them 40-50 percent of the area.

According to their purpose, the lawns can be:

Ground floor - for decoration of the most important places in front of buildings. To their quality there are special requirements - alignment, homogeneity, a short cropped cover. Most often, parterre lawns create from one kind of high-quality grasses - ryegrass, bluegrass, etc. Very carefully prepare homogeneous soil and level its surface.

Ordinary, or park, the most common, the main type of grass cover. Grasses for such a lawn are selected according to environmental conditions. In overwhelming majority use a mixture of herbs.

Beautifully flowered, or Moorish - include, in addition to grass mixtures of flowering plants - poppies, flax, koreopsis, cornflowers, etc. During flowering, such lawns do not shear.

The beauty of lawns is determined by the selection of grasses, soil preparation and care. Lawn grasses should satisfy such requirements:

• have good decorative qualities - bright green color and thin leaves;
• have resistance to unfavorable conditions - drought, frost, etc.;
• quickly move into spring growth and turn green until late autumn;
• have a dense, closed grass stand, resistant against trampling;
• evenly grow after mowing;
• ensure the durability of the lawn.

Among grasses with the above qualities and suitable for the arrangement of lawns in the Central Black Earth zone, include meadow grassland, red and meadow fescue, rye grass and pasturegrass raspberry. Bluegrass meadow grass is one of the best grasses for lawns. Forms a smooth, dense carpet of beautiful dark green color, equally bright throughout the season. Bluegrass is durable, frost-resistant, resistant to trampling. It grows well on heavy soils, poorly tolerates sandy and acid soils. The disadvantage is its slow development in the first time after sowing.

Fescue red - grows on a wide variety of soils, from sandy to marshy. The best development is achieved on wet sandy loams and loamy soils. It forms a strong sod and a beautiful dark green thick, thin and uniform grass stand. It has great frost resistance, it is quite shade-resistant. Poorly tolerates drought. In arid periods requires mandatory watering.

Fescue meadow - less demanding to the conditions of growth, very quickly develops, but after three or four years it forms loose mounds that spoil the appearance of the lawn.

Rajgas pasture - is demanding to the soil and moisture, it grows well after mowing. Develops quickly in the year of sowing, but.is relatively short-lived. Forms a beautiful lawn.

As a component of a mixture of herbs for ordinary and meadow lawns use a foxtail, a polecat, a hedgehog, a timothy, a comb and some other herbs.

Depending on the purpose of the lawn, crops can be clean or mixed. Clean lawns under favorable conditions for the growth of this type of grasses are of the highest decorative quality. Therefore, parterre lawns are created, as a rule, from one type of grass.

Mixed grass cover is more resistant to adverse conditions and therefore more durable. On uneven, uneven soils, it forms an even grass stand.

The rates of sowing of grasses depend on the specific features of the seeds and their economic suitability, sometimes - on the designation of the lawn( on the stalls the seeding rate is higher).

Below are the norms for sowing grasses in pure form, in kilograms per hectare, on lawns:

Ordinary Ground

Grasshopper meadow 27 40

Fescue red 100 150

Rigrass grazing 135 200

Polevice 15 22

Fescue meadow 120 180

Clover white 45 -

On common lawns mixtures of herbs are used: for relatively dry and insufficiently fertile soils, red fescue - 70, meadow grass - 20, rye grass - 10%;for sufficiently fertile soils, bluegrass meadow grass - 70, red fescue - 30%.

Soil under long-term lawns is prepared especially carefully. The most difficult to arrange lawns in areas where the fertile layer has to be imported from the side. For this purpose, the sod land is prepared in advance, organic and mineral fertilizers are added to it and transported to the bulldozer leveled plot. The earth is carefully leveled and seeds are sown.

If a lawn is arranged on a site with a fertile layer of soil, then a deep digging or plowing with the application of fertilizers is made, the surface is carefully leveled, planted with grass, rolled up, and in small areas - compacted with a rammer.

Seeds are sown in spring( on ripe soil) or early autumn( late August - early September).When sowing manually, try to spread the seeds as uniformly as possible, then cover them with rakes or cover them with a thin layer of earth. To the edges of the lawn seeds sow thicker. Sowing is carried out in calm weather.

Sometimes, when you need to quickly create a lawn or with a large slope steepness, and also in the case of edging flower beds and resorts resort to ournovke, that is, stacking the finished turf instead of sowing grass.

The sod is cut with sharply honed shovels or plow. The thickness of the sod is 6-8 centimeters, the size is 15X30, 20X30 or 30X30 centimeters. Dernines carefully aligned to size, especially when the beds and flower beds are laid, the edges are trimmed after laying.