Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 July 1876 — Rolling the Soil After Planting. [ARTICLE]

Rolling the Soil After Planting.

When the soil is heavy and not dry, seeds will germinate and. cpme up as quickly if tlie ground is not. rolled as if the surface were tramped or pressed down on ithe seeds. Every tiller of the soil must exercise himself to understand the vast difference tlie’re is between a light, sandy loam soil and a heavy soil. Concerning the subject of rolling the soil. after seed is planted, Peter Henderson yrites: About the 15th of' May I a large patch in the open ground* with celery seed, and another with cabbage seed. The soil was in fine order, and the beds afte&jßOwing were raked —the celery with a' (fine steel rake, the cabbage ‘with a large •wooden rake—which covered the seed of each to the regular depth. The weather wras •dry, with indications of its continuing««, and after sowing I had both the cabbage and 1 celeiy'beds .rolled heavily, leaving, however, a strip of each Unrolled, so that I could clearly show to some of my young men what the result of this omission would be if dry weather continued. Had a heavy rain fallen within ja day or two after sowing it would; have; compacted the soil, excluding the air from the seed—in fact, producing the effect of rolling it. But w« had no rain for three or four weeks, and a burning hot atmosphere, passing through the shallow, loose fiavei. - 4ng of tlie heeds, shriveled and dried them hjxjso that it was impossible thqy-jcould ■ever germinate. This little experiment resulted exactly as any qne having expelienee in seed-sowing knew it must. Our crons of celery and cabbage plants were as fine as need be on the rolled bed, while not one seed in a thousand of tlie celery , and not one in a hundred of *the cabbage, started in the strips left loojip. The season for sowing turnip seed ik at hand, and the same care is more likely to be necessary now than in May, for July and AuSist are always hot, and often dry months. fence it is imperative that seeds be closely covered, so that the dry, hot. air may be, as far as practicable, kept frdm them. In the sowing of caulifiower, cabbage or lettuce in September, the sam« precaution should be used; 1 But in small beds if a roller is hot at handkfter raking tlie beds, the soil should be firmly patted with the back of a spade. 'Thifl will not only'produce quicker and more certain germination, but it will leave the sttrfade of the bed smooth so that the plants will come up straighter than if the beds wetee left rough.— N. Y. Herald.