252 DIRECT SOWING 



3. Covering the seed. 



In sowing with the tube, a weighted brush of twigs may be 

 attached to and trailed behind the tube, and thus cover the seeds 

 immediately they have been sown. The going to and fro of the 

 plough cattle and the workmen will assist the process. When 

 large seeds have been sown, an ordinary roller clod-crusher may 

 be passed over the soil to complete it. 



With the perambulator drill, as large seeds are never sown with 

 it, the workman walking behind it will tread down the soil suffici- 

 ently in most cases. If further measures are necessary, twigs may 

 be tried broom fashion and attached just behind the dropping tube 

 (Fig. 90 >), or bush-harrows (Fig. 91) or roller clod-crushers may 

 be drawn over the area. 



When seed is broadcast, it may be raked over or pressed into 

 the ground with rollers, according to the depth of covering re- 

 quired. 



In whatever manner the seeds are covered, it must not be forgot- 

 ten, that besides burying them down to the right depth, they must 

 everywhere be brought into sufficiently close contact with the soil 

 in order to be protected against unfavourable accidents of the 

 weather. Hence the means to be employed in any case will de- 

 pend partly on the way the ground has been prepared and sown, 

 partly on the size and nature of the seeds and character of the 

 resulting seedlings. 



4. Value and employment of the method. 



It will have been seen that this method of sowing requires a 

 very large expenditure of labour, supervision and seed, and, there- 

 fore, of money also. 



Again, however thickly we may sow, unless every prevailing 

 condition is uniformly favourable (a very rare contingency), the 

 seedlings come up unequally ; in some places there are none at 

 all, in others they are few and far between, while elsewhere 

 they may stand too close together. The result is that sowings 

 generally grow up badly, repairs and other improvement operations 

 are very difficult to execute and control, and often it becomes 

 impossible, or next to impossible, to distinguish failure from success. 



But, on the other hand, when the seedlings do come up more or 

 less uniformly, they meet their crowns and close over the ground 

 earlier than in any other method, thus not only arresting at once 

 the deterioration of the soil from exposure, but also affording each 

 other mutual protection and engaging with each other in a beiiefi- 



