254 SOWING SEED, ETC. 



1810 the custom has been to sow in early fall. Many sow grass 

 alone at this time of year and get a full crop the next year. 

 Where grass is sown with another crop they injure each other. 



James Sanderson, in Transactions of tlie Highland Agricultural 

 Society, 1863, says: " If the grasses arc rank and luxuriant, they 

 greatly retard the harvesting of grain and frequently deteriorate 

 its value. This early luxuriance is often injurious to the grass 

 itself, as it extracts valuable ingredients from the soil. The 

 grain denudes the grass of valuable food and renders it more 

 susceptible of injury from extremes of weather. The plan of 

 sowing grass seeds without a crop has recently been adopted on 

 several farms of Great Britain with great success. Experiments 

 have shown that the profit from the first year's pasture was 

 more than an equivalent for the want of a crop of grain. The 

 next year the field is fit for pasture a fortnight earlier than it 

 would have been if sown with a crop. The grass gets a better 

 start and makes*for several years a better pasture or meadow." 



He mentions the fact that many men who have tried this plan 

 are of the same opinion. The plan of seeding without another 

 crop has here been made prominent, because many persons have 

 scarcely thought of any other way than that of seeding to grass 

 with a grain crop. 



Sowing Seed where Grasses already Occupy the Land. 

 In the Northern States where the land was more or less thickly 

 covered with a growth of sedges and wild grasses, in numerous 

 instances we have seen this order of things very materially 

 changed by the introduction of other species. This was 

 accomplished by simply sowing the seeds over the surface. In 

 some cases a harrow passing over the land exposed the soil in 

 small strips and patches. The change of grasses in such cases is 

 usually rather slow and unsatisfactory, but this is not always the 

 case. 



.At the Agricultural College, a good lawn on well prepared soil 



