Seed drill

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

To meet Wikipedia's quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup.
Please discuss this issue on the talk page, or replace this tag with a more specific message. Editing help is available.
This article has been tagged since November 2006.

The seed drill was "re-invented" by Jethro Tull in 1701. It allowed farmers to sow seeds in well-spaced rows at specific depths. Prior to this farmers simply cast seeds on the ground, by hand, for them to grow where they landed (broadcasting). Some of the broadcast seeds were cast on unprepared ground where they never germinated, germinated prematurely only to be killed by frost or died from lack of access to water and nutrients.

The seed drill was originally invented in ancient China.

History Channel, Where Did It Come From? "Episode: Ancient China: Agriculture" He [Host Michael Guillen] explains how the early planting tools: the hoe, the wheelbarrow and the cast iron guan plow revolutionized agriculture. We see a model of the Chinese seed drill which multiplied planting efficiency by a factor of ten.

This invention gave farmers much greater control over the depth that the seed was planted and the ability to cover the seeds without back-tracking. This greater control meant that seeds germinated consistently and in good soil. A further, very important consideration in the days before selective Herbicide was the ability that drilling afforded, to hoe the crop during the course of the growing season.

Over the years seed drills have become more advanced and sophisticated but the technology has remained substantially the same. The first seed drills were small enough to be drawn by a single horse but the availability of steam and, later, gasoline tractors saw the development of larger and more efficient drills that allowed farmers to seed even larger tracts in a single day.

Recent improvements to drills allow seed-drilling without prior tilling or otherwise preparing the soil. This means that soils subject to erosion or moisture loss are protected until the seed germinates and grows enough to keep the soil in place.

[edit] Drilling

The term used for the mechanised sowing of an agricultural crap.

The seed from the hopper of a seed drill is distributed by a rotary mechanism into a set of tubes arranged to provide a suitable distance between each other to allow optimum growth of the resulting plants. The seed falls into "drills", or channels made by a coulter.