Newly-made cricket grounds sometimes show depressions after the grass
is up. Where these are shallow, an occasional sifting of fine loam may
follow the mowing, and with patient attention a true surface can be
restored; but a quantity of soil, roughly thrown down, will smother
the rising plant. Should the hollows be deep, a different procedure
becomes necessary. Young grass cannot be cut and rolled in the manner
usual with an established sward, and if holes are filled with a thick
covering of earth, it is necessary to re-sow and follow with the mower
and roller, as already advised. But if the plant is fairly thick, it
may perhaps be possible to cut the young turf in small square sections,
and lift each one separately by means of a thin flat board or piece of
zinc. After making good the level, the pieces of turf can, with care,
be restored without much injury. As a finish, lightly touch the surface
with the flat beater, and spray over it two or three cans of water.
Inequalities in old turf can be remedied by a simpler mode of
treatment. Across the hollow spot, cut strips 10 or 12 inches wide,
and roll back the sward from the centre. Make the bed perfectly level,
leaving the soil with a firm but crumbled surface; then restore the
turf, which will be found rather too long for the space, and tenderly
compress it into the original position; beat carefully down, give a
soaking of water, and in due time mow and roll. In a few days no trace
of the operation will be visible, but the grass ought not to be roughly
used until it is thoroughly re-established.
Fairy rings are sometimes troublesome. They are caused by several kinds
of fungus. When these decay, the soil becomes charged with nitrogenous
matter, and a dark green spot of grass is the result. The mycelium
exhausts the soil of the constituents which are essential to the
existence of the fungi, and as new supplies of food can only be found
on fresh ground, the spot becomes a circle, which annually increases in
circumference, until it either breaks up or the fungi are exhausted.
No direct remedy is known, but it has been observed that lawns which
are liberally dressed every spring with stimulating manure produce
dark green herbage, closely resembling the fairy rings in colour. As
a consequence the circles are less conspicuous, and they also show a
tendency to disappear under the effects of the manure.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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