294 TIME OF SOWING GRASSES. 



made, in the hope of obtaining such information as 

 would settle the question as to the best time of sowing 

 ij grass-seed, and the practice of seeding down in the fall 

 was then commenced by a few individuals. At and 

 jbefore that time, the practice of sowing in the spring 

 was universal, and the same custom has very generally 

 prevailed till within a very few years. Both the prac- 

 tice and the opinion of the best practical farmers in the 

 northern and eastern states have changed to a consid- 

 erable extent, and it is now commonly thought best to 

 sow grass-seed in the fall, early in September, if possi- 

 ble, mixing no grain or anything else with it, though 

 there are, and always will be, some cases where the 

 practice of sowing in the spring with grain is conve- 

 nient and judicious. 



There can be no doubt that it is, in most cases, an 

 injury to both crops to sow grain and grass-seed to- 

 gether. The following statement of an experienced 

 and successful farmer will enable us to comprehend 

 how the change was brought about, though others had 

 tried the same experiment long before him. " More 

 than twenty years ago, we had several dry summers, in 

 the springs of which I had sown grass-seed with rye, 

 barley, and sometimes wheat, and lost most of my seed 

 / by the drought. I could scrape it up, the plants being 

 A dead and dry, when small. Since that time I have uni- 

 i versally ploughed after haying, and sowed Timothy 

 1 1 grass and redtop." 



( Other farmers probably experienced the same diffi- 

 culty, and came to the same conclusion. Our seasons 

 differ greatly, it is true, but it is now well understood 

 that we must calculate on a drought in some part of 

 the summer, and grass will suffer more from drought 

 than from frost. Hence the propriety of fall sowing. 

 There are some localities, undoubtedly, where spring 



