Lawns in the tropics are created by planting grass – not by sowing it. The perfect lawn as articulated above by a Cambridge college groundsman is impossible for us to create. So forget your Wimbledon-like tennis court and Headingly-like square (ouch), and lawns-like King’s College, Cambridge, cut and rolled for hundreds of years – but don’t despair. A really first-rate lawn can be created here if you have a little money to buy in selected grass types or are prepared to carry out certain basic essential work on your existing one.
Most Guyanese live on the coastal strip. You live on land which may flood regularly, or is baked dry in the blazing sun, but which grows grass. In Guyana the best lawns are going to be made by planting warm weather grass types such as Bermuda grass (Cynodon dactylon), the Savannah grass (Axonopus compressus). All the varieties of Bermuda grass are fine-leaved and can become a bit of a pest at times if they grow into your flower beds. All varieties of Savannah grass are broad-leaved. Bermuda and Savannah grasses are to be seen all over Georgetown in parks and gardens.
If you have sufficient funds and are in a hurry you can buy your grass from Barbados or Florida in cellular trays, each cell being filled with a ‘plug’ of the grass you want or has been recommended for your particular purpose. That can be expensive. If you are not in a hurry then you can establish your own grass nursery by carefully selecting the grass type you wish to have and planting it in a special area where it can grow and spread and be kept free of weeds to be planted out at a later date.
However it has to be said that most people are going to try and use what they have in the garden, and are not going to bother to buy or specially grow a particular type of grass or grasses. There isn’t the time or money to do it. You just have to improve what you have. And what do you have? If your grass has got very fine leaves it is almost certainly going to be Bermuda grass. If it has wide leaves it is almost certainly going to be Savannah grass.
So what to do with your existing lawn? First, don’t let your husband or wife practise their golf swings to try and become Guyana’s answer to Tiger Woods. They are bound to create bare patches which are tailor made for weed seeds. Discourage all four-legged creatures. Dogs like to dig for bones they think they’ve buried in some past life. Keep your lawn cut regularly and cut short. This will encourage it to become thick. A thick lawn will not allow weeds to develop, including weed grasses.
People with a ten-blade mowing machine such as the Ransomes Auto Certes have got the game by the throat, and can get 100 cuts per yard and probably the best looking lawn this side of the rabbit-proof fence.
Next to cutting short is the matter of making it level. This is not done by rolling, and you can safely throw the roller away, because you can’t roll away humps. What you can do is top-dress the lawn to fill up the depressions in order to make it level. It may be necessary to put down as much as four pounds to the square yard to achieve this, or even more, but you can be sure that if it is put on evenly the grass will grow evenly. A word of advice. Don’t try and level your lawn with sand. That will merely clog up the drainage. Take the trouble to obtain good soil, sieve the stones and rubbish out of it, and use that instead. The grass will grow better, and it will stand dry weather better.
When you cut grass you do in fact remove a large part of the plants’ food-creating factory. You have to stimulate the growth of more leaves by adding nitrogen, usually in the form of sulphate of ammonia which is best mixed with sand at the rate of 10 parts of sand to 1 part of sulphate of ammonia, and then applied at the rate of four ounces to the square yard, two or three times a year.
In summary, therefore, cut it often, cut it short, feed it occasionally, and top-dress it to make an even surface. Until next week may your God go with you wherever you may be.
