SOWING GEASS SEEDS. 93 



be more than counterbalanced by losses in the grass plant, to say 

 nothing of the labour of patching it afterwards. 



The time for sowing grass seeds with spring corn will be 

 either immediately after the corn is got in, or when it is only 

 two or three inches high. It is well understood that the less 

 forward the cereal, the better the chance for the grass. 



On heavy, and especially on rich land, the choice of corn is 

 open. It may be either barley, oats, or wheat, and wheat is 

 always desirable for the grass.^ For lighter soils barley or oats 

 are available, and in this case oats are preferable to barley. 

 Broadcasting the corn is more suitable than drilling, as the 

 cereal and the grasses then come evenly and cover the soil. 



Under certain conditions it answers well to cut the oats 

 green, and turn the crop into hay or silage. This method of 

 treating the herbage helps to keep down weeds quite as much 

 as when the oats are allowed to mature, and it takes far less out 

 of the land.^ 



Occasionally a field in autumn wlieat is wanted for a per- 

 manent pasture, and there is no difficulty if the land be clean 

 enough, and the grass seeds can be sown before the wheat is 

 too high. In favourable weather the seeds may be put in even 

 as early as the middle of February, as the corn will defend 

 the young grass from injury by frost. Should the wheat be 

 very backward, however, or stand thin on the ground, the 

 sowing had better be deferred for a time. In the event of the 



' I have been most successful from an April sowing on a tliin plant of wheat, and ' 

 Mr. Clare Sewell Read says : ' I never find any difficulty in obtaining a plant of seeds, 

 even in May, when sown with wheat, for then the ground is firm and the surface soil very 

 fine. Often when the seeds fail in barley, the headlands round by the gates have a good 

 plant, because there is fine mould on the surface and a solid bottom.' 



" A well-known Scotch agriculturist says thai he ' considers the best method of 

 sowing to be with about two bushels of oats, to be cut green before there is aay kernel. 

 There is a large crop of useful fodder, the small seeds have beneficial protection while 

 they require it, annual weeds are kept down, and the grasses get relief by the early cutting 

 at the stage most suitable for Ihem to have full possession of the soil.' He adds : ' I 

 have sown down one hundred and sixteen acres in this way. The same grasses, sown at 

 the same time and sometimes on parts of the same field, but with the oats allowed to 

 ripen, have proved decidedly inferior.' 



