Seed drill China, and later a seed drill by Jethro Tull that was influential in the growth of farming technology in recent centuries. Even for a century after Tull, hand sowing of grain remained common. In older methods of planting, a field is initially prepared with a plow to a series of linear cuts known as "furrows". The field is then seeded by throwing the seeds over the field, a method known as "manual broadcasting". The seeds may not be sown to the right depth nor the proper distance from one another. Seeds that land in the furrows have better protection from
Shaker Seed Company brown paper with the seed variety name, where the seeds came from, and sometimes the grower's name. The first paper packets were pieces of paper cut into eight different sizes for the different seed types. The small paper envelopes were made by hand and folded and glued accordingly. Ebenezer Alden invented a printing block device for printing the envelopes by hand. Specific machines were made early in the nineteenth century to speed the process of cutting and printing the packets. New Lebanon Shaker journals referred to the seed packet sizes as: pound-bag size, bean size, beet size, onion size, cucumber