A seedbed or seedling bed is the local soil environment in which seeds are planted. Often, it comprises not only the soil but also a specially prepared cold frame, hotbed or raised bed used to grow the seedlings in a controlled environment into larger young plants before transplanting them into a garden or field. A seedling bed increases the number of seeds that germinate.
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👉 Seedbed in the context of Tillage
Tillage is the agricultural preparation of soil by mechanical agitation of various types, such as digging, stirring, and overturning. Examples of human-powered tilling methods using hand tools include shoveling, picking, mattock work, hoeing, and raking. Examples of draft-animal-powered or mechanized work include ploughing (overturning with moldboards or chiseling with chisel shanks), rototilling, rolling with cultipackers or other rollers, harrowing, and cultivating with cultivator shanks (teeth).
Tillage that is deeper and more thorough is classified as primary, and tillage that is shallower and sometimes more selective of location is secondary. Primary tillage such as ploughing tends to produce a rough surface finish, whereas secondary tillage tends to produce a smoother surface finish, such as that required to make a good seedbed for many crops. Harrowing and rototilling often combine primary and secondary tillage into one operation.
In this Dossier
Seedbed in the context of Rotary tiller
A cultivator (also known as a rotavator) is a piece of agricultural equipment used for secondary tillage. One sense of the name refers to frames with teeth (also called shanks) that pierce the soil as they are dragged through it linearly. Another sense of the name also refers to machines that use the rotary motion of disks or teeth to accomplish a similar result, such as a rotary tiller.
Cultivators stir and pulverize the soil, either before planting (to aerate the soil and prepare a smooth, loose seedbed) or after the crop has begun growing (to kill weeds—controlled disturbance of the topsoil close to the crop plants kills the surrounding weeds by uprooting them, burying their leaves to disrupt their photosynthesis or a combination of both). Unlike a harrow, which disturbs the entire surface of the soil, cultivators are designed to disturb the soil in careful patterns, sparing the crop plants but disrupting the weeds.
Seedbed in the context of Cultipacker
A cultipacker is a piece of agricultural equipment that crushes dirt clods, removes air pockets, and presses down small stones, forming a smooth, firm seedbed. Where seed has been broadcast, the roller gently firms the soil around the seeds, ensuring shallow seed placement and good seed-to-soil contact.
The term cultipacker is almost exclusively applied to ridged rollers, while the terms field roller or land roller may refer to either a smooth or a ridged roller. Some farmers treat the terms as mutually exclusive, but many others treat the ridged tools as a class of field rollers. For example, C.H. Wendel's Encyclopedia of American Farm Implements and Antiques covers the whole category as land rollers. The term cultipacker appeared in English around 1914 and probably originated as a brand name of the C.G. Dunham Company of Berea, Ohio, which advertised "Culti-Packer" models starting around that time. That company did not have the ridged-roller subcategory to itself by any stretch, as Wendel's book demonstrates, but for whatever reason, its name for its version stuck well in many minds. By the 1920s and ever since, it has been widely used in a genericized sense, at least in some regions of the U.S. if not nationwide. In Britain, an equivalent tool is usually called a Cambridge roller or Cambridge roll; D.J. Smith's Discovering Horse-drawn Farm Machinery says, "The Cambridge roll, named after its makers, was a ring roller made up of numerous equally spaced rings or ridges."
Seedbed in the context of Harrow (tool)
In agriculture, a harrow is a farm implement used for surface tillage. It is used after ploughing for breaking up and smoothing out the surface of the soil. The purpose of harrowing is to break up clods and to provide a soil structure, called tilth, that is suitable for planting seeds. Coarser harrowing may also be used to remove weeds and to cover seed after sowing.
Harrows differ from ploughs, which cut the upper 12 to 25 centimetre (5 to 10 in) layer of soil, and leave furrows, parallel trenches. Harrows differ from cultivators in that they disturb the whole surface of the soil, while a cultivator instead disturbs only narrow tracks between the crop rows to kill weeds.