The herald-advance. (Milbank, S.D.) 1890-1922, 1905-02-24
CARE OF SEED
Extracts from Pure Seed Circu
lar of Experiment Station

Never sow or sell all the good seed
grain on hand, but carry some over
from year to year SO that in case of q
total loss of the crop you will still
have some pedigreed and acclimated
seed for formation.
Always select the best part of your
crop for seed before harvesting: cut,
stack and thresh this by itself, doing
the threshing after the rest of the crop
has been threshed, thus reducing the
danger of mixing in the machine to a
minimum.
Always clean your seed, as already
described.
Always treat your seed for smut, as
described by Prof. Wheeler.
If your seed becomes mixed with
other varieties SOW small patch of
the very best and cleanest seed by it.
self and pick out the foreign heads by
hand just as it begins to head out.
Any kind of mixture of varieties is
very undesirable for many reasons.
Start little seed nursery in your
garden, and every year 60 through
your fields at harvest time and select
a few of the best grains from the best
heads, from the best stools, and sow
them by themselves in we'll prepared
soil in your garden where they can be
carefully watched and tended. You
will be surprised at the rapidity with
which desirable strains can be in
creased in this way, and the amount
of Improvement that can be accom-
plished.
A single good head of wheat will
contain about 25 good kernals; each
kernal should produce at leaat four
l,D - e
one hundredfold in one year. One
thousand kernels will weigh about |
ounce, so that single kernal should
produce Cne-tenth of an ounce the first
year. This sOwn the second Year,
should produce ten ounces, which sown
the third year should produce one
thousand ounces, or about bushel in
three years from single kernel. If
an average head containing twenty-five
kernals is used the first year, the
amo int produced each year would be
twenty five times as great. or, two
and one-half ounces the first year,
about peck the second and about
twenty-five bushels the third year. Of
course, these amounts would be con-
siderably reduced by accident, disease,
ETC.. even under garden conditions,
but they serve to indicate how rapidly
seed will increase under the most
favorable conditions.
Luther Burbank estimates that an in
crease OF one grain of wheat per head
annually, for the entire crop of the
United States. would amount to an
increase of $4,000, 900 bushels per
annum without extra cost or effort: of
one kernel OF corn per ear, 5000, 900
bushels; of one kernel of oats, 20, OOO,-
600 bushels: of one kernel of barley,
1,50O, 900 bushels, of one potato per
hill, 21,O0O,O 900 bushels.
It is a we'll known fact that all our
farm crops are produced from plants
that have been gradually brought up
to their present conditions by selection
and development from very primitive
forms. This had been done by past
generations of farmers of whom we
are accustomed to think and speak as
ignorant, unprogressive, and old
fashioned. Are we, the farmers of
South Dakota, who often boast of
living in the most enlightened age,
under the best government, and in one
of the most productive grain districts
of the world, doing our share towards
carrying on this work of Improvement,
that was begun and has been developed
under conditions far less favorable
than our own? Unless we can give an
affirmative answer to this question, we
are not living up to our duties and
privileges as American citizens of
this Twentieth Century.