Cheyenne transporter. [volume] (Darlington, Indian Terr.) 1879-1886, 1883-11-28
Sowing Grass Seed.


case Of any kind of 81 ain. Complaints
of poor catch" are very common.
Not unfrequently several dollars per
acre are expended in seeding field to
grass, and no return is made for the
money. A little grass appears the next
season and large number of weeds
There is a loss of crop, and the land
becomes nursery for undesirable
vegetation. The cause of failures to
establish good stand of grass are
numerous. One of the most prominent
is poor seed. Much of the seed is poor
when the stalks that produced it are
cut. Much more becomes injured while
the stalks are being cured, or while they
are in stack. 1t is likely that still
larger quantity becomes ruined after it
is thrashe1 and is stored in buildings.
Moisture is the most frequent cause of
injury, still other agencies affect it fav-
orably. Sometimes it is easy for the
experienced eye to discern that the seed
is injured. Its color is changed. At
other times it is impossible to discover
that the seed is not good without the
aid of quite powerful microscope. 1t
is somewhat easy to determine if the
seed possesses any vitality by placing
few grains between pieces of moistened
cloth or batting and leaving them in
somewhat warm place few days, TAX
ing care to keep them moist during the
time. If the seed is positively bad it
will soon begin to mould and give off n
bad odor. If it has vitality it will soon
begin to swell, and, after few days,
sprouts will appear. BY keeping up
the supply of moisture roots will also
appear. Such seed may generally be
trusted to grow. Still it may not
possess sufficient vitality to produce
sprouts that will continue to grow in
field
1t is often the case that all the grains
in given lot are bad. There is gener-
ally some good seed in very poor lots.
OF course n large quantity of grass
and clover seed is carried over from
one year to another. There is no
assurance that some is not several years
old when it is purchased. Dealers
think the seed is quite too costly to
throw away. They mix old seed with
new, and in that way make the whole
pass for the merchantable article.
Sometimes the proportion of good seed
is extremely small. Some of the seed
will produce strong stalks, some will
germinate but will not have sufficient
vitality to sustain the sprouts, and
some will not germinate at all. Mr.
Flint in his work on grasses states that
few farmers SOW less than q bushel of
redtop seed, peck of timothy, and
four pounds of red clover to an acre OF
land These will contain not
less than 100000 seeds. They
would allow about 1000 seeds
to the square foot, and fifteen
seeds to every square inch of land.
Were one-fourth of these seeds to
germinate and produce strong stalks
the plants would crowd each other.
One vigorous red-clover plant will oc-
cupy square foot of ground. Still,
most farmers sow much larger
amount of seed than that given above.
Even then they fail TO secure what is
called good stand" Obviously few
of the seeds produce stalks that grow.
The failure of so many of the good
seeds to produce vigorous stalks is due
to variety of causes. Many lie on
the surface of the soil and are eaten by
birds OF perish for want OF moisture.
Some are buried so deep that they fail
to germinate. This is probably the
case with the majority of the seeds. 1t
is difficult to give grass and clover seed
sufficient covering without running the
risk of giving them TO much.
Farmers are not well agreed about
the best time for sowing this kind of
grass-secd Those in one section OF
the country generally follow the prac-
tices that prevail in another portion,
where the soil and climate are very