176 DRY LAND FARMING 



thus sown, it is covered by the harrow, or by the disc. 

 The harrow will cover it unevenly. Some of the seeds 

 will lie upon the surface. This means that in dry areas 

 they will not sprout. Some of them may be covered so 

 lightly that they will not sprout. Other seeds may ger- 

 minate and yet root so near the surface that they 

 cannot well resist the adverse influences of dry weather 

 that follows, and all of them may be rooted too shallow 

 to enable the plants to properly stand up and grow amid 

 the vicissitude that may come to them because of the 

 lack of rain. When the seed is covered with the disc, 

 some of it may not be covered deeply enough. Much 

 of it may be covered too deeply. There is a lack also 

 of that compression which the disc drill gives that is so 

 favorable in hastening germination. This lack of com- 

 pression is equally present whether the seed will be 

 covered by the smoothing harrow or by the disc. 



When grain is sown with the drill, it is deposited so 

 deeply that the harrow does not readily uproot the 

 plants when the grain is being harrowed subsequent to 

 the appearance of the plants above the surface of the 

 ground. Such harrowing is absolutely essential to suc- 

 cessful crop production in dry areas. When the crop is 

 sown broadcast, the harrow will readily uproot the plants, 

 or at least many of them, because of the shallowness of 

 the rooting, and the more delicate the plants in the early 

 stages of their growth, the more will they suffer from 

 this cause. The better ability of plants that are deep- 

 rooted to withstand severe harrowing is well illustrated 

 in grain plants that have volunteered, as it were, from 

 seeds of the previous crop shattered out upon the ground 

 and buried deeply with the plow. In many cases, even 

 the disc will fail to dislodge these. 



The advantages of drill seeding over broadcast seed- 

 ing are so many and so apparent, that it would be correct 

 to say that broadcast seeding has but a limited place un- 



