Domestic Encyclopædia (1802)/Broad-cast Husbandry
BROAD-CAST, a term in husbandry, used to denote a particular mode of sowing corn, pulse, turnips, clover, grasses, and most field-plants. When seeds are scattered over the surface of the ground by the hand, they are said to be sown in broad-cast; by which, this method is distinguished from drilling, and horse-hoeing, or the new husbandry.
The comparative merit of the drill and broad-cast has, by several experiments, been determined in favour of the former. One of the most practical details on this subject, was communicated to the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufattures, and Commerce, by Mr. Boote, of Atherstone, who, in the year 1789, obtained the gold medal from that patriotic institution, as an acknowledgment of his merit, in ascertaining this interesting point.
Mr. Boote selected a piece of cold clay land of twenty acres, four of which were drilled with four bushels of wheat; and, at the same time, four acres adjoining, of a similar soil, were sown in the broad-cast way, with ten bushels of the same grain.
In the beginning of April, 1788, the drilled wheat was first hoed, and again in the last week of the same month, when the broad-cast was also hoed, with hoes of a proper size for the purpose.
At harvest, the crops were separately reaped and threshed, to ascertain the difference of each produce. That of the four acres drilled was one hundred and nineteen bushels, one gallon, and four pints; and the four acres broad-cast yielded ninety-four bushels, two gallons, and four pints. Hence the difference in favour of the former, was twenty-four bushels, seven gallons, valued at five shillings and sixpence a bushel, together with six bushels of seed saved by drilling, which cost seven shillings and four-pence halfpenny a bushel, amounting in the whole to nine pounds one shilling and three farthings.
In this comparative experiment, a bushel of wheat produced by the broad-cast was nearly equal in weight to a bushel of that obtained from the drill. Mr. Greenway, however, by an experiment made in the year 1787, found that the grain of his drilled crop was superior to that of his broad-cast, not only in quantity but in quality, the former weighing two pounds per bushel more than the latter. But, as his broad-cast crop was not hoed, it maybe fairly inferred, that it did not arrive at full maturity, either in consequence of the injury done to it by weeds, or for want of the soil being pulverized by the hoe.
The superiority of the drill method, in the culture of turnips, was ascertained by Mr. Dann, of Gillingham, and the silver medal of the Society adjudged to him for his successful experiment.
On the 6th of July 1789, he drilled four acres of turnips, and, on the same day, in the same field, he sowed two acres broad-cast. A very considerable difference appeared in favour of the drilled plants, from their first coming up, in consequence of which he sowed no more by broad-cast. The drilled turnips were ready for hoeing five or six days before those that were sown broad-cast on the same day. Besides drilled turnips being less liable to injury from frost, and less difficult to hoe, than those sown by broad-cast, about three-fifths of the seed used in the latter method, are sufficient for the ground when drilled. When the turnips were come to maturity, Mr. Dann selected two perches from each of those cultivated according to the different methods before-mentioned, and found that the two perches drilled, produced 494lb.; and those broad-cast only 446lb.; making a difference of 48lb. in favour of the former method.
It must be evident to the agriculturist, that seed deposited from one and a half to three inches deep in the soil, will vegetate sooner, and grow faster, than that sown on the surface, which is seldom buried deeper than from one quarter of an inch to an inch—at a season, when moisture is particularly requisite for the growth of the plant.