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How Green Is Your Grass?

Buddy Spoon
Reference Specialist

Grass is important to many people whether you live in a house, or an apartment, or

just enjoy the sight and smell of new cut grass. Many years ago, when I was about eight

years old (1947), one of my chores was to mow our yard when we lived in Charlotte. Our front yard was fairly small and easy to mow, but our back yard was much larger and took a lot longer. I started out with a push Toro reel type mower, the kind that are coming back in use to be environmental friendly. I didn’t think of my mowing as

friendly to anything or anyone, especially me. I saved my money for a few years and

was able to buy our first gas motor driven reel lawn mower, which I enjoyed since it cut

my mowing time in half and left our yard looking much better. I even tried to mow our neighbor’s yard, but after I mowed some of her flowers down, I had to quit.

So if you are working on your yard now or plan to, I want to tell you of some helpful materials that we have at Patrick Beaver Memorial Library. “All About Lawns” is an Ortho book and is “The complete regionalized guide to seeding, sodding, fertilizing, watering and the newest information on grass varieties.” “The Impatient Gardener’s Lawn Book – How To Grow A Beautiful Lawn With Out Working Yourself Into The Ground” by Jerry Baker takes you from selecting the right seed for your area and soil, building or rebuilding a lawn, to fertilizing, mowing, watering, weed control, insect control, disease control, and pet and varmint control in a step by step lawn program. We also have two good videos on lawns to look at, “Lawn Care – Planting and Maintaining” with Dean Johnson from the TV series “Hometime”, and “Lawn Care – Tips & Tricks” by Jerry Baker.

This would also be the time to plant new flowers. We have many books on what to plant and how to plant, but I asked my favorite gardener, my wife Janet, who has our yard

in beautiful flowers year around. She said that annuals such as: begonia, clematis, periwinkle, cleome (spider flower), dahlias, geranium, petunia, and zinnia can be planted now, and iris can be transplanted, but for iris, it is best to wait until July.

The books on flowers, lawns, trees and shrubs can be found in the nonfiction section on the second floor of the Library – call numbers 635-635.9.

Hickory Public Library is a department of the City of Hickory. Patrick Beaver Memorial Library is located at 375 3 rd Street NE on the SALT Block. Ridgeview Branch Library is at 706 1 st Street SW. Call Patrick Beaver at 304-0500 or Ridgeview at 345-6037.