Iron County register., 1889-03-07
SOWING GRASS SEED.
Why Spring Work Is Becoming More
Popular Every Year.

why spring HOEk IS becOm1Hg Moro
Popular Every Year.
What a world of change this is.
surely, and change is no more ap-
parent in any other direction than in
farm practice. Heretofore it has been
thought indispensable to have a grain
crop for the protection CD of grass
and clover seed, as if grass and clover
can not take care of themselves! They
do this too well when they spring up
as weeds where we don't want them,
and, in fact. they are able to do it as
well where we do want them; conse-
quently we are gradually cutting loose
from the foster crops, and are sowing
clover and grass just as we sow any
other crops, giving them all the
ground, and all the light and air. I
sowed a few acres of clover and timo-
thy, last spring, alone. The land was
thoroughly well plowed and worked
with a pulverizer. The grass and
clover-a peck of each per acre-were
sown, and light sloping-tooth
harrow was run over the surface. II
was pleasing sight to see the young
grass, like hair. coming through the
surface in two weeks after sowing, and
the round clover leaves interspersed
among the tiny spires of the grass.
Nothing interfered with that grass, and
it came on quickly, covering the ground
by the end of May Git was sown in
ApriD, and in August it was a dense
mat. In September 1 turned lot OF
calves on to it and they fed it down,
and now it does not differ at all in ap-
pearance from an adjoining part of the
field seeded the year before with oats.
But oats! A few years ago the man
who sowed grass seed with oats would
risk being thought imbecile at least,
perhaps crazy. Fall grain Nas thought
the only crop to seed grass with, and
clover was sown on the snow, Or
on the frozen ground, or on the
hard, beaten surface, haphazard,
in the spring, to do or die. Usually
it did die. Then the poor catch
was complained of and seedlings that
had failed made poor meadows and
scanty hay. The thing cured itself.
Grass would no longer grow in the old
way, and fresh land must be provided,
and oats necessarily usurped the place
of the fall grain. 1 say usurped, be-
cause the crop is a usurper, needless
and injurious, because it robs the
grass and clover of the food they need
and must have or perish. But grass
and clover are sown with oats, and the
practice is becoming popular and gen.
eral. just as a boy on a log fears to
get out of reach of the shore of the
pond, and keeps within knee depth of
water, so we farmers hang on to the
spring grain seeding, and can not
break loose because the young grass is
so tender. we think. 1t is tender,
doubtless, but it is too tender to be
burdened with a hungry crop to starve
and shade it from the air and
sun. If one can not bring himself to
this belief, he must choose the Oat
crop as the foster, and if he does well
with the land, giving it manure liber-
ally, the oats will pay for it, and the
grass will repay for it. and fit the soil
well; the grass and clover will make
out to stand the strain and show a fine
aftermath on the stubble, and give
good account of themselves the next
year. / have about thirty acres thus
seeded with oats, not that thought
the oats helped the grass, but that the
land was good enough for both-as it
was-and | wanted the oats anyhow.
But for several years past have lost
every clover-seeding made in fall crops,
and l have had but poor timothy and
other grass from fall sowing. If one
will study the drift of experience now
given in the agricultural journals, he
will find that the old method is fast
being abandoned and that spring SOW
ing is becoming popular and success
full. Thus we change and advance, but
unless one reads of what is going on,
he gets left behind. Stewart,
in Rural New Yorker.