SOWING AND PLANTING 



37 



away from plant-setting, and will consider the sow- 

 ing of seeds in drills or hills in the open ground. 

 What has already been said about marking and fur- 

 rowing, applies here, too — if you wish to drop seed 

 by hand. The furrower will do for potatoes, peas, 

 etc., and the marker for other crops. (Cover the 

 furrows, after sowing, with a hoe or a one-horse 

 plow ; or rig your cultivator with side shovels — tak- 

 ing off the back and front teeth — so that it will 

 throw the dirt into the furrow from both sides.) 

 Fine seeds may be sown in hills, shallow drills 

 or marks, and covered with a hand hoe or a wheel 

 hoe. 



The easiest and nicest way to sow small seeds, 

 however, is to use a machine planter, seeder or drill. 

 There are very excellent and inexpensive hand drills 

 or seeders made, that will sow almost any kind of 

 seed in continuous drills, or drop seed at regular 

 intervals of one, two, or several, inches apart — ac- 

 cording to the way you set the machinery. These 

 machines open and cover the furrow, can be regu- 

 lated to sow seed plentifully or sparingly, and the 

 hill-dropping feature saves seed and considerable 

 after-thinning in the rows. There is a hand-power 

 onion-seeder now on the market that sows the seeds 

 at the right distance apart, tZK.'o rozvs at a time — 

 thus saving much thinning and half the walking and 

 time. There are hand corn-planters, hand potato- 

 planters, machine corn or potato-planters pulled by 

 horses, and, in fact, handy planters and sow^ers for 

 every purpose. Most of these drills and machines 

 have a marker which marks the next row ; thus, if 

 you get the first row straight with a line, the others 

 will correspond (see full-page illustration facing be- 

 ginning of this chapter). Always test the drill on a 



