
This arrangement enables seed drills to be much wider than the seed hopper - as much as 12m wide in some cases. Most modern drills use air to convey seeds in plastic tubes from the seed hopper to the colters. The seeding rate is altered by changing gear ratios. Seeds are spaced out using fluted paddles which rotate using a geared drive from one of the drill's land wheels.

#England drill series
Many seed drills consist of a hopper filled with seeds arranged above a series of tubes that can be set at selected distances from each other to allow optimum growth of the resulting plants. Even for a century after Tull, hand sowing of grain remained common.įilling a feed-box of a seed drill, Canterbury Agricultural College farm, 1948 Drilling the field Seed drills of earlier centuries included single-tube seed drills in Sumer and multi-tube seed drills in China, and later a seed drill by Jethro Tull that was influential in the growth of farming technology in recent centuries. The concepts evolved from ancient Chinese practice and later evolved into mechanisms that pick up seeds from a bin and deposit them down a tube. Some machines for metering out seeds for planting are called planters. The use of seed drill saves time and labor. Use of a seed drill can improve the ratio of crop yield (seeds harvested per seed planted) by as much as nine times. With seed drill machines, seeds are distributed in rows this allows plants to get sufficient sunlight, nutrients, and water from the soil.īefore the introduction of the seed drill, most seeds were planted by hand broadcasting, an imprecise and wasteful process with a poor distribution of seeds and low productivity. This saves them from being eaten by birds and animals, or being dried up due to exposure to the sun. The seed drill sows the seeds at the proper seeding rate and depth, ensuring that the seeds are covered by soil. This ensures that seeds will be distributed evenly.

( January 2013) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message)Ī seed drill is a device used in agriculture that sows seeds for crops by positioning them in the soil and burying them to a specific depth while being dragged by a tractor.

Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations. This article includes a list of general references, but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations.
