Norwich bulletin., 1912-05-18
CAREFUL SELECTION OF SEED ASSURES
 RESULTS
RESULTS

1 pared with us in Connecticut. He | plants a great deal more corn than l any of us would be likely to. So he 1 has a bigger seed-plat than we | should need He takes, as a starter,
 the ten best ears of corn he can find
 on his farm He prepares a seed l plat of one-quarter acre. Then he l shell the ten ears, by hand, reject
 ing all the tip and all the butt ker- nels He plants the seed one kernel in a hill, takes good care of the crop and, when it natures, takes the best ten ears from the rows Showing the best yield, for his next seasons | seed-bed The remainder is graded l and the best used for seed in the big 1 fields
 It can readily be seen that every | year he thus graded up his seed from good to better. Every farmer knows | that. of the corn grown from any given ear, some will be pretty good and some pretty middIin," The chances always are that there will be a hill or ! two just a leetle better than the pa rent stock Now if the ears from those improved hills are taken for seed it is reasonable to suppose that some one or two of the hills raised from them will be better even than they That's the whole idea in nut shell. Keep your best foot foremost" and keep your best corn in the plant ing bag. Thereby this years best corn will be better, a little, than last years best. And next years will be still better. There may be an end to the ladder of improvement, but it won't be reached for some seasons,
 yet. Carlsted isn't at all satisfied 1 with his yield of q hundred and six bushels. He keeps on selecting his seed and improving it and breeding it
 up, and declares he is a young man yet, that he expects to come mighty
 close to two hundred bushels an acre before he gets through.
 Most of us farmers save our seed ! from the field, taking the ears that happen to look incest when we husk. Probably there are very few who still go to the corn crib and take anything in sight But we who choose our seed and trace" it up and hang in dry place where neither rain can rot nor mice devOur, even we fail to get the best seed, invariably we'll shaped ear may chance to develop on weak stalk, Such things have hap pened. When we plant seed from such an ear we not only plant the tendency ! to good kernels, and regular rows, | and proper filling out, we also plant 1 the tendency to undersized and stunt 1 ed stalk. Those of US who go through the field before cutting and pick out ] our seed ears, then, observing both 1 the perfection of ear and the sturdi- ness of stalk, do better But we should do better, yet, if, instead of selecting hundred or two ears from field in this way, and planting them, | just as they come, we should throw out i all but ten of that hundred or two, { and use only the very best seed pro- ! duced next season from that ten. There's no question about the theory ! Such facts as those shown by Carlsted l prove that it is also sound practice. | We all admit as much when we make l any attempt whatever at selection of | seed. The only point is whether we 1 are doing our best as farmers when we { stop with half success, with any sort | of success less than the utmost pos sible
 Years ago, when I was raising field corn as part of my farm rotation, l
 practically doubled my yield per acre
 of the Oldfashioned "Longfellow" corn simply by breeding up to two- ! cared and three cared stalks. It is perfectly clear that there'u be more corn on a field if every stalk bears two ears than if each stalk has but one. l never got quite So far as that.
 But l did get my corn, in five years of breeding, to that point where more stalks bore two ears than one, where a good many more bore three ears. And 1t all started from one single stalk with good sized ears on it. the only one, that first year, in three acre lot
 As I've said, over and over again, | I'm not telling you farmers how to farm. There are too many know it.
 alls engaged in that sort of bully
 ragging, as it is. But you know, your selves, just as well as anybody else, ! that we farmers are inclined to get into ruts, and keep in them We've | formed the habit of doing things a certain way and in certain order, and we keep on doing them that way, because we don't feel like giving our selves the wrench necessary to twist out of the rut into better going Isn't { 1t so? Come, now; be honest with yourselves.
 The longer l live, the more inclined l am to that very sort of thing, my self: and the more l become convinced that there isn't much use of trying to get any of us old mossbacks to do l any differently. But, thank heaven, there's quite a lot who aren't yet too old to learn, nor too rheumatic to jump over fence when it happens to be in their way.
 This matter of seed selection isn't anything new or risky. It doesn't in volve us in any additional expense. l The best we can do in that line is simply an improvement on the very thing we are now doing. If any of you are raising corn wouldn't it be 1 better for you to raise bigger crops? l If any of you are not raising corn be- cause your accustomed methods haven't shown it profitable crop, ! wouldn't it be worth taking the chance | to see if just a little more care in ! choosing seed might not turn the loss i into grain?
 There never yet was a farmer worth his salt as a farmer, who was thor oughly satisfied with any crop he eyer raised. Such a man may indeed do well; but he wants to do better. D1rn kicker. [ say it to you We hoIn mean Jae chrome kicker. who is all the time finding fault with the uni verse and his neighbors. But there is a "divine discontentn which is l felt by the man who is never quite | satisfied with himself or with what he acconpishes And that is very diff ! ferent thing. It tends 10 make one | modest, not to say humble: it also tends to enterprise, to Improvement. ! to progress.
 -
 According to the census of 1910 there were over ten thousand acres planted to corn in two counties. The | average yield was somewhere about forty five bushels per acre. Now, if a simple little thing like the seed -selec- ton system practiced by Carlsted of Minnesota should double that yield on ten thousand acres, wouldn't it be worth Mhile2 Monldn,t il be 1rnrth h