Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 1, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 September 1876 — Sowing Grass seed Alone. [ARTICLE]

Sowing Grass seed Alone.

Farmers as a class cannot be made to believe that grass seed will succeed just as well, aad often a great deal better, if sown alone than with grain, in the usual way. If the land is rich and the following season is favorable to the growth of grass then a good stand may usually be obtained by sowing with grain; but if droughts should occur the young, delicate grass is likely to be smgthered or to perish for want of water. The grain among which it is growing being so much larger and more vigorous will appropriate to itself the bulk of the moisture and fertility of the soil. The severe drought which has prevailed in the Atlantic States the present season will make reseeding of many thousands of acres necessary, ana we suggest to those who have never given the sowing of grass seed alone a trial to do so this fall, and see if a better stand of grass cannot be obtained in that way than by the old doub-ling-up system. When grass and grain are sown together both must necessarily suffer more or less from crowding, if not for lack of moisture, and as the grass is the weaker, it is injured most, the result being a feeble growth not worth gathering for hay, and of little value for pasture until the second year. But if the grass seed is sown alone in early autumn, or about the time of sowing winter grain, it will generally grow sufficiently rank to yield a fair crop of hay the following season, and will not be half so liable to be destroyed by droughts. This system of sowing gress seed alone, may not answer equally well in all localities and soils, but it is being practiced by our best farmers, some of whom have expressed to us surprise at their own stupidity at so long practicing the old system. We have tested both systems time and again, and invariably the grass seed sown alone was far the best; hence the above suggestions to those who may have failed to get a good stand in their fields the present season. There is, however, this disadvantage in sowing grass seed alone, that one plowing and harrowing does not answer for two crops as when it is put in with grain.— N. Y. Sun.