Block · one region of the page, as the scanner read it. It may hold a whole story, part of one, several, or an advertisement; stitching blocks into articles is the next step. Text is supplied OCR.
Page 35 · column 1 of 5 · from the scan, no model involved
SVSJf)(bsT\ erry Baker (“America’s
W*Master Gardener,” he
vl ¥j calls himself) has a plan £/• H *v5 f°r your lawn, a 13-step
plan.
First you dethatch,
and then, in order, you:
mow low; control crab grass; feed it; water it; give it a spring tonic; control weeds, insects and diseases; spot seed; aerate; give it a summer tonic; apply lime and gypsum in the fall, and then give it a fall tonic. (By my reckoning that’s 14 steps, but I think that if you’re “America’s Master Gardener” they cut you some slack in the math department.)
The odd thing is, he’s right — at least as far as I can tell.
Last year I didn’t have a dethatcher, so I skipped over the first few steps to get to the spring tonic part of the plan.
That’s called “Grandma Putt’s Spring Grass Tonic” in Baker’s book, “The Impatient Gardener,” and here’s how you make it: Take a cup of Epsom salts, a cup of Listerine mouthwash, a cup of liquid soap and a cup of ammonia and put them in a quart jar.
When the Epsom salts are dissolved, fill up the remainder of the jar with some beer. Put this stuff into a hose-end sprayer and use it on your lawn. It covers about 2,500 feet of grass, and it’s supposed to give a lawn a good kick-start if applied in May and again in late June.
Grandma Putt said that the stuff will help your thatch decompose, will eradicate bad bugs that want to kill your lawn, will wash the pollution off the grass and will do a variety of other good things. Being a sporting type, I did just as the old lady directed.
91.9%