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Key facts:
- 1674 - Born in Lower Basildon
- 1693 - Studied Law at Gray's Inn
- 1699 - Married Susanna Smith
- 1699 -
Began farming
- 1701 - Began developing and refining seed drills
- 1709 - Moved to Prosperous Farm, Hungerford
- 1731 - Published "Horse-Hoing Husbandry"
- 1741 - Died - buried at Lower
Basildon
He was born in Lower Basildon in 1674, the son of Jethro and Dorothy Tull, a quite well-to-do family. He matriculated from St
John's College, Oxford, in 1691 and was admitted as a student of Gray's Inn in 1693 where he studied law, in preparation for a high-flying political career. He was called to the Bar in 1699 but
never actually practised as a barrister.
Continuing ill-health stalled these plans. Instead, after his marriage to Susanna Smith of Burton Dassett in Warwickshire in 1699, he began farming with his father on the
family farm at Howberry near Wallingford. He was not a natural: he hated the work, and resented the reduction in profits caused by his labourers' salaries.
At the time, cereals were distributed into furrows ("drilling") by hand. However, Tull had noticed that traditional heavy sowing densities were not very efficient so
he instructed his staff to drill at very precise, low densities. By 1701, his frustration with their lack of co-operation prompted him to invent a machine to do the work for him.
Inspired by the memory of an organ he had once taken apart, he designed his drill with a rotating cylinder. Grooves were cut into the cylinder to allow seed to pass from the
hopper above to a funnel below. They were then directed into a channel dug by a plough at the front of the machine, then immediately covered by a harrow attached to the rear. This resulted in the seed
being sown more sparsely and regularly in rows and theoretically saved more than one third of the seed, though this depended largely on the temperament of his labourers, who were often opposed to such
modern developments in principle!
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Initially the seed drill was only a
limited success, but it went through a series of modifications and improvements by various people over the next 150 years. It always remained much too expensive for the small farmer until the industrial
revolution of the nineteenth century, and it was not until 1851, when Smyth's brought the price of a simple drill down to about £5, that its use became widespread.
In 1709 he moved to Prosperous Farm
in Hungerford. Two years later he decided to travel around Europe to improve his health and study agricultural techniques there. He visited France and Italy between 1711 and 1714, and noted the methods of cultivating the vineyards in the Languedoc area of France and in Italy, where it was usual practice to hoe the ground between the vines rather than manuring.
On returning to Prosperous in 1714 he tried this on his fields of grain and root crops - he pulverised the earth between the rows, believing that this released nutrients and
reducing the need for manure. While apparently successful - he grew wheat in the same field for 13 successive years without manuring - it is more likely that he merely prevented weeds from overcrowding
and competing with the seed.
Eventually, as agricultural improvement became fashionable, more interest began to be taken in Tull's ideas. His other famous invention was the horse
hoe, which he introduced in 1714. With his horse-hoe plough one man could cover six acres in a day. It also led to easier reaping of crops and better destruction of weeds.
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In 1731 he published his book "The Horse Hoing Husbandry", detailing
his system and its machinery. [The full title of his 1733 publication included "An Essay on the Principles of Tillage and Vegetation wherein is shown a Method of introducing a Sort of Vineyard
Culture into the Corn-Fields in order to Increase their Product and diminish the common Expense"].
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 "Jethro Tull")
 "Jethro Tull's Horse-Hoeing Husbandry(w)")
 "Jethro Tull seed drill(w)")
 "Jethro Tull seed drill (1752)(w)")