J04 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



To accomplish tliis, the ground must be deeply plowed, taking 

 care that it is also pulverized ; after the ground is dried it should 

 be scarified with a cultivator, and this operation must be repeated 

 three or four times, at intervals of a week, so as to destroy all the 

 weeds as they start, and if the soil is tenacious, it should be rolled 

 before using it ; it should then be harrowed with a sharp, fine 

 toothed harrow, until every portion of the surface is reduced to a 

 fine powder ; it must then be suffered to lie until the appearance 

 of the sky pretty clearly indicates the approach of rain, when the 

 mixture of seeds should be evenly sown and covered with a bush 

 harrow, (not a tooth harrow.) The time of sowing should be as 

 nearly as possible to the period when the seeds ripen. 



A very good preliminary operation is, to plow the ground in the 

 spring, and sow it with buckwheat, which is to be carefully turned 

 under when in blossom. This keeps the weeds under, its fermenta- 

 tion pulverizes the soil, and the decay of its vegetable matter 

 furnishes a rich pabulum for the young grass. It will be said that 

 this preparation is troublesome and expensive, so it is, but you 

 cannot make seed take, especially on stiff soils, without it. I 

 have been told by farmers, that they have succeeded in making 

 their new seeding look as green the first fall as an old meadow 

 'with one-tenth of the labor that I have prescribed. So they have ; 

 but when I have examined the plants that constituted that green- 

 ness, I have found from nine-tenths to three-fourths of it to consist 

 of worthless weeds. The problem is not how to make the newly 

 seeded land speedily green, but how to fill it speedily with useful 

 grass. 



Before the seeds have germinated, the ground should be covered 

 with a thin coating of rotten manure, when in a short time the 

 young grass will make its appearance. Before, the frosts set in, the 

 ground should be covered with straw, which will prevent the 

 radiation of heat from the earth, and will prevent that tearing of 

 the rootlets from the roots which ensues from the alternate freezing 

 and thawing of the ground, and which is well known to be exceed- 

 ingly destructive to our best grasses. Such being the efiect of 

 the straw covering, it will be found to repay with usurious interest 

 the cost and trouble of laying on. There is another cause for the 

 failure of grass seeds to germinate, which is not generally under- 

 stood, and to which I ought to call your attention, and this is the 

 burying of seeds too deeply in the earth. Carefully repeated ex- 

 periments made with every precaution against errors, show that 



