CHAP. VII SOWING PASTURE SEEDS 55 



growing longer than Oats, it is apt to shade the ground too late in the 

 season. 



Rye excels Oats in hardiness, and is therefore more often used for autumn 

 sowings to produce green fodder. 



Cereals for the Gtrain.- — Amongst spring-sown protective cereals. Wheat 

 is most desirable, since it dies out of the land sooner than Oats, and does 

 not tiller out too freely. 



Summer barley can only be rehed on in good land ; does not yield much 

 straw ; and in favourable seasons occasionally tillers out so luxuriantly as to 

 eventually leave vacant spaces in the pasture. 



Oats occupy the land too long, and are too easily laid for a desirable 

 protective crop. 



Winter Wheat and Rye are sometimes employed to protect spring-sown 

 seeds ; but they are readily laid, and are frequently thus responsible for 

 serious injury to the young fodder plants, especially to leguminous varieties. 



Other Protective Crops. — Rape and Flax have been employed with 

 more or less success ; but the latter is not generally cultivated in this country, 

 while sheep do great damage to the young pasture when feeding off the 

 former. 



Time of Sowing 



Spring Sowing. — Spring is undoubtedly the most favourable season 

 for the sowing of pasture mixtures, because there is always sufficient moisture 

 remaining in the land from the winter to ensure germination and to support 

 the young plants. From the third week of March until the end of the first 

 week in May is the safest time ; and as a general rule, the earlier the seeds 

 can be got in during this period the better will be the results. Sowings made 

 in early March incur risk of serious injury from late frosts, unless they are 

 protected by winter corn. 



Leguminous plants and some grasses do not resist severe frost and the 

 uprooting action of alternate freezing and thawing so well when the seed is 

 sown in autumn as when the seeding is done in spring, because the spring- 

 raised plants have a longer period in which to become established before the 

 winter, while the seedlings generally vegetate more freely during spring than in 

 autumn, and are consequently better able to defend themselves against such 

 encroaching plants as Fiorin. In addition, the plants from a spring sowing 

 always grow more luxuriantly during the following spring than do those of 

 autumn-sown pastures. 



Sowing with Corn. — It is permissible to sow considerably earlier in a 

 winter cereal, as the young fodder plants are sheltered by the corn, which 

 should be about 2 inches in height when the seeds are sown. The more 

 general practice, however, is to sow immediately the protective cereal has 

 been got in during spring, preferably in April. 



Sowing on old Leys. — Seeds may be sown at the end of February or 

 quite at the beginning of March on an old Clover or Sainfoin ley which was 

 heavily dragged the preceding autumn, and top-dressed in early winter. 



Summer Sowing. — Pasture seeds are occasionally sown in June after 

 green Rye or Vetches, the first hay crop, Trifolium, &c., but such sowings 

 are reliable only in very wet seasons. 



Autumn Sowing. — While autumn sowings after potatoes, green fodder 

 crops and, occasionally, cereals are always hazardous excepting in wet years, 

 they are sometimes absolutely necessary, owing to the impossibility of 



