Kingsbury County independent. (DeSmet, Kingsbury County, S.D.) 1894-1929, 1907-11-15
WHAT ABOUT SEED oATs2

The outlook for securing good,
strong oats for seeding next spring
Is % assuring. AS late threshlng re-
turns are made known, Ii become
more evident that the grain is poorly
filed, and much of it shrunken until
il will not make safe seed to SOW.
With this alarming scarcity OF de-
pendahle seed, ii behooYes every farm
or 70 make early n ample pro-
vision for seed. Where heavy seed cam
not be had the next best thing to do
is to grade our home grown stock
until you are sure that you have blown
over and discarded all light n
Shrunken kernels. Too much pains
cannot be taken with this seed, for
the crop has received a eve set
back this year, and only the hardest
and most vigorous seed can now be
depended upon to help matters next
season.
There is no use trying to shield the
fact that our oat crops ave been
deteriorating for several years. When
conditions are favorable, we succeed In
growing a fair crop; but oats have
lost that stamina which would enable
IT to pull through adverse conditions,
and the result is that wet weather or
cold weather d~isastrously affects the
crop. What we need is some live work
in breeding up old varieties, or intro
ducing some new blood. AS yet we
have lone practically nothing, or at
least we have accomplished nothing.
We have not today one solitary variety
Of oats which we can depend pom to
pun through a bad season. The Swe-
dish Select, which did well in the
northern oat belt for so many years,
notably I'm Wisconsin, has made q very
poor showing this season. In fact, in
some of the best oat counties in Wis
corsin, the Silver Mine n the scrub
sorts have done better than the high
bred Swedish. The best sample Of
oats l have seen this season comes
from northern Minnesota. 1t is an un-
named variety, but it has been care
fully selected for six years, and it has
been proved harder. more nearly rust
proof and a better hull than any of
The new sorts. This leads me back
again to the question of grading up
the best we have on our own farms.
II some n~eighbor has been successful
in getting a fair crop. try some Of his
seed, and then SOW enough to make a
good stand.
one thing is certain, we must get
busy breeding up. This can be don
by two ways-by selection and by hy-
bridizipg. Selection is the most feasible
method for farmers, but il must be
done persistently and systematically.
Cleaning and grading seed grain is
good as far as 1t goes. But for best
results hand selection should be prac-
ticed in the fields, selecting the best
filed heads and best stalks of straw.
BY going through the field just when
the crop is turning ripe, these out
standing heads will be quite easily no.
ticed, and one can surely select enough
TO SOW an acre plat the next season.
Cross breeding or hybridizing is dis
tinctly the work of the plant breeder
and our experiment stations, and while
our oat fields show the need OF work
of his kind. farmers had best stick
TO hand selection. We are fast com
ing to a point where every farmer must
be an experimentalist. The conditions
on even adjacent farms vary SO widely
that only general rules can be laid
down, so it must rest with every in
dividual farmer to work out his own
problems. and work for results On his
w land. and under his own condi-