106 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[April, 
Seeding- Down Lands to Grass. 
To best prepare a field for seeding down, at¬ 
tention should first be given to draining. If it 
is naturally cold and unproductive, or if water 
lodges in any portions of it, ditches should at 
once be opened through it, and laid with good 
underdraius. Surface ditches are apt to get filled, 
and coarse grasses and weeds grow up in them, 
which interfere with mowing and prevent the 
flow of water.—Draining finished, spread the 
manure and put in the plow. Do both of these 
works thoroughly. On poor soils manure is im¬ 
portant to give the grass a good “ catch,” and to 
supply it with food afterward. Deep plowing 
and a faithful harrowing, are needful to bring the 
land into fine tilth and to enable the roots of the 
grass to spread out and penetrate deep where 
they will flourish in spite of drouth. 
It is in dispute whether, in seeding down, a 
few or many varieties of grass seed should be 
used. For a pasture, it is obvious that several 
sorts are preferable to any one. One sort gives 
us an early growth, but dries up in mid-summer. 
Another starts later, but holds on well. Others 
grow best in Autumn; some grow best on light 
soils, others on heavy; some are fibrous-rooted, 
and grow best near the surface; others are tap- 
rooted and draw their food from below. Ani¬ 
mals crave a variety of grasses, and thrive best 
on such a diet. The English make the combi¬ 
nation of grasses more of a study than we do. 
They often sow six or eight kinds of seed, and 
sometimes more. An experienced farmer of our 
acquaintance favors only a moderate number, 
as follows : For seeding an acre, 10 pounds of 
red clover, 5 pounds white clover, one peck of 
Timothy, and half a bushel of red-top. He 
salts this mixture down with two bushels of 
plaster. Mr. A. B. Dickinson recommends, 6 
quarts Timothy, 4 of red-top, 2 of blue-grass, 2 
of white Holland clover, and 4 of red clover. 
When several kinds are sown, that best suited 
to the particular soil, will generally run the 
others out, and in time mainly occupy the surface. 
Other questions relate to the time of sowing, 
and whether the grass seed should be sown by 
itself or with another crop. It is quite a favor¬ 
ite practice to seed down in early Autumn, say 
September, and usually with rye or winter 
wheat. The argument for this is, that the prep¬ 
aration of the land for wheat or rye is just what 
it needs to make the grass catch well and grow 
well; and that by getting a good start in Autumn, 
it makes a stronger growth the next season 
than it would if the seeding were deferred until 
the Spring. But sometimes, the preceding crop 
(say potatoes,) is a late one, and can not be got 
off until October; and sometimes other farm 
work presses so hard in September that stock¬ 
ing lands to grass tan not be attended to. In 
such cases, spring seeding must be adopted. 
Get the ground in order as early as possible, and 
sow with oats, barley, or spring wheat, making 
the grain crop rather light, so as to give the 
grass all possible chance. The grain crop will 
shade the grass plants until they get well 
started, and then it will be removed in time for 
the grass to get strong before Winter sets in. If 
the soil is cold and backward in Spring, it is ad¬ 
visable to plow it late in the preceding Fall: it 
can then be got ready quickly in Spring for seed¬ 
ing. Some of the best farmers prefer sowing 
grass seed without any grain crop. One crop at 
a time, they say, is enough. The grain is a 
coarser and more exhausting crop, it interferes 
with the growth of the tender grass, and steals 
away its food. One of the chief objections to 
sowing grass seed alone is, that weeds are apt 
to get the start of the grass. When grass seed 
is put in alone, the ground should be cleaned 
and tilled with special care, and a large amount 
of seed be sown, so as to occupy the whole sur¬ 
face at once, and produce a fine hay. 
For the American Agriculturist . 
Notes on Wisconsin Farming. 
SOWING SPRING WHEAT IN THE FALL. 
Of late years, many of our Wisconsin farmers 
have observed in the Spring, on Fife wheat stub¬ 
ble, quite a thick growth of self-sowed wheat. 
In one case, I knew as good a crop produced 
from a piece of Fife stubble, self-sowed and un¬ 
cultivated, as was raised on some of the neigh¬ 
boring farms in the usual way. These observa¬ 
tions, together with the facts that the wheat crop 
of 1861 fell much below the average, and that of 
1862 was nearly a failure, have led many think¬ 
ing farmers to make some experiments. I have 
conversed with many such, and all seem to base 
them on the same general grounds, viz.: 1st, 
that the wheat crop of 1860 was quite double 
the average of previous years, and the seed for 
that crop was gotten in from two to four weeks 
earlier than in any other season for ten years 
before. The inference was, to get the seed in 
early would increase the crop. 2d, that the Fife 
wheat will retain its vitality and lay in the 
ground all Winter, and when the ground is 
plentifully covered with snow, will make quite 
a good growth under it. All, too, seemed to 
have the idea, that it should be sown so late in 
Autumn that it will not sproutbefore the ground 
freezes permanently. Of course it is difficult to 
determine just when it is going to freeze up and 
continue frozen. A farmer in Waterford, Racine 
Co., sowed ten acres, I think, late in November, 
but it remained open with alternate freezings so 
long after, that the wheat sprouted before it 
froze up for good, and the crop was a failure. 
One of your subscribers in Vernon, Waukesha 
Co., sowed a field late, and in three days after, 
the ground froze hard. After the snow went 
off in the Spring, the field was fairly green with 
the growing wheat. Before the • ground was 
thawed more than one or two inches, there oc¬ 
curred a beating storm of rain, which washed 
out and drowned the young plants in places. 
Counting out those spots where it was destroy¬ 
ed, the piece yielded at the rate of 40 bushels 
per acre, of a very fine quality of wheat. In 
several cases, to which I am knowing, this ex¬ 
periment succeeded well last year. Another of 
your subscribers in Newport, Lake Co., Illinois, 
sowed September 15,1861, a bushel of Fife wheat 
and a bushel of winter wheat on equal quanti¬ 
ties of land side by side. The Fife wheat pro¬ 
duced 11 bushels of as fine wheat as I ever saw. 
The bran was much whiter and thinner than 
spring-sowed of that variety. The winter wheat 
produced 12 bushels of good quality. Last 
September he sowed several acres of Fife wheat 
of spring-sowed, his opinion being, it will pro¬ 
duce as good a crop as that seed would, which 
was the product of that he sowed the previous 
Fall. But in order to test the matter, lie lias 
sowed a bushel of wheat raised from that put in 
the previous Fall, and a bushel from spring- 
sowed, on equal quantities of land side by side. 
I hope after he has thoroughly tested the mat¬ 
ter he will give your readers the result. Hun¬ 
dreds of bushels of Fife wheat were sown 
last Fall at different dates. How it will suc¬ 
ceed, is yet a matter of some doubt: I will take 
pains to inform myself in proper time and let 
you know. A large breadth of winter wheat was 
sown last Fall, I should judge four times as 
much as w T as sown the year previous. The rea¬ 
son is, winter wheat for the last two years has 
done exceedingly well, yielding from 20 to 40 
bushels per acre of fine quality; while at the 
same time spring wheat has done very poorly. 
In the harvest of 1861 a majority of fields did 
not yield more than 10 bushels per acre. Bad 
seasons and the chinch bug will not wholly ac¬ 
count for these light crops. Half of it can be 
laid to quack farming. Here and there I find a 
thorough, scientific farmer, who uever fails of 
raising a good crop of spring wheat. These 
farmers invariably take the Agriculturist. 
Racine CoWis. R. F. ROBERTS. 
For the American Agriculturist. 
Market Fairs. 
With all that has been written in favor of 
these institutions, and the efforts that have been 
made to establish them, they are still a great de¬ 
sideratum in the farming districts. There can 
be no doubt that our farmers are losing millions 
of dollars every year for the want of them. In 
this respect, the British farmer has one of his 
chief advantages over us. It is not so much 
that he has cheaper labor, that his living ex¬ 
penses are less, or that he follows his business 
more closely, that he prospers, but that he has a 
steady reliable market near home for every 
thing that he produces. This gives him a great 
advantage over us, notwithstanding he has to 
pay a rent of from ten to twenty dollars an acre 
for his farm and much heavier taxes than ours. 
Every farming district in England has its week¬ 
ly market. If a farmer has tat cattle oi milch 
cows to dispose of, they are driven a few miles 
to the Market Fair and sold nearly as well 
as he could sell them in the London market, 
without the large expense of transportation. If 
a butcher wants cattle he goes to the fairs to 
buy. Here , there is a middleman, a drover, be¬ 
tween the butcher and the farmer, making his 
profit, often a very large one, which would other¬ 
wise go to the farmer. If the English farmer 
wants store cattle or seeds, he can find just what 
he wants at the expense of a morning ride. 
Here, if a farmer wants a stock of cows he has 
either to go to a distant market, losing traveling 
expenses and time, or to take his own convey¬ 
ance and spend a week perhaps, in picking up 
what he wants, in his own or the neighboring 
towns, at such prices as he is obliged to pay. 
There is no steadiness to the prices in buying or 
selling, except in the large market towns. The 
regulation of prices is very much in the hands 
of middlemen. 
But few efforts have been made to establish 
such fairs in this country, notwithstanding their 
manifest advantages. It takes time to change 
from a system in which we have been educated, 
even though that system be a bad one. There 
is nothing in our circumstances to forbid the es¬ 
tablishment of these fairs and the full realiza¬ 
tion of their benefits. They began as religious 
celebrations many centuries ago. We have 
nothing, except our Annual Agricultural Ex¬ 
hibitions, upon which such market fairs could 
be grafted, and these are quite too far apart to 
answer the purpose. The place, however, 
where such exhibitions are held, generalljr the 
city or village in the trade center of a county, 
would be a good starting point for these fairs. 
It not unfrequently happens now, that a sale of 
stock and other products occurs at the close of 
the annual exhibition. More or less exchange 
