The Manitowoc pilot. [volume] (Manitowoc, Wis.) 1859-1932, 1877-10-04
Saving Garden Seeds.

Should farmers save their own garden
seeds? There is something to be said on
both sides of this question, and ROW is
the time to say it. Many seeds ripen
Just when farmers are most busy with
harvesting their crops. There is also a
more serious difficulty in saving pure
seeds of melons, cucumbers, and other
plants which are apt to mix in seeding.
Wick, Gregory, Briggs, and other large
growers of seeds would never think of
saving seeds from the score or more
varieties of garden plants which every
farmer should grow in the space of an
ordinary garden. And if not, then why
should the farmer expect any better sue
cess? 1t costs too much labor to grow
plants till fruiting to hazard its entire
loss by sowing doubtful seed. We may
better afford to pay treble prices for
seeds which we know TO be pure, than to
grow them and find too late that they are
worse than worthless. Nor is it any as
surance of purity than the fruit from
which the seed was taken was of superior
quality. Many superior watermelon or
muskmelon has had a cross of squash, or
something else-nOt at all affecting the
flavor, but making the seed something
that no one would plant for any purpose.
it is one of the difficulties of this subject
that you never know till the second year
whether your homegrown seeds have
been hopelessly mixed. If, however, you
do not care for the seed, this becomes an
advantage. You may plant the most
closely-related plants-squashes, melons,
cucumbers, and pumpkins-all in the
same quarter, and, if you choose, with
vines running together, and the fruit
will not be injured a particle. If you
find any unpleasant suggestions in the
flavor of your vegetables, you may be
have shown itself though sown a mile
from anything else.
But some kinds of seeds are s. easily
grown and saved that farmers are mex
cusable if they need to buy. In great
majority of cases it is sheer carelessness,
or worse, that they do not have seed to
SOW and to spare. Lettuce always seeds
and when you once get good kind, you
need never fail of a supply. 1t will, in
fact, seed the ground: and be up before
you think the soil warm enough to stir
with the plough. If not in the right
place to leave, the young plants will
make all the better heads by trans
planting. The pinch of seed which
you will give five or ten cents for
pays the seed grower at the rate of
small matter, but if on a plant occupy
ing a square foot of ground you can save
five cents worth of seed, then for that
square foot you will get crop worth
more than 81, 200 an acre.
Sweet corn may always be saved, if the
grower will take the slight trouble to
save one, two, or more ears among the
best at the time of gathering. Beets
may be saved, if you will plant what
would otherwise be lost after wintering
in the cellar. When you have grown a
quantity of beet seed, it will be good for
seven years, which is more than you can
surely say of seed which you buy. Seed
dealers have no business to know how
long seed Will continue to grow, but they
unfortunately do. They understand
too well, also, that farmers always SOW
garden seeds, especially the small ones,
much too thickly; hence we find such a
mixture of old and fresh onion seed, as
the dealer will calculate to have come
up thick enough. The result is that if
we take extra pains, and SOW just right,
the plants are altogether too thin. There
are 50 many vexations in buying poor
seeds, that of all which can be most
easily grown, farmers had better save
supply from their own gardens. They
need not patronize the seed grower the
less for the snare money they save in
growing their own vegetable seeds may
be spent in buying flower seeds, or beau
tiful plants and shrubs to ornament their
grounds, and make home seem to others
the pleasant place it should be to them
selves and families W. j., F.. in COM
try Gentleman.