Saturday news. (Watertown, S.D.) 19??-19??, 1914-02-19
Supt. Palm Writes
About Seed Grain

What shall the harvest be next fall? :?
It's too early to even make a predic-
ton. But we are sure of this, it will
depend very largely on this one fac
tor. Will it grow? That is, will the
seed that is sown and planted in Cod
ington county next spring grow. We
don't mean that it should all grow, but
will the per cent of termination be at
least fair. The only way of making
sure is to test the seed. You may
say that the ground is good place to
test all Of the grains. That is true.
But sometimes it is a mighty expen-
sive test. It's cheaper to make "a test
before, as then a poor batch Of seed
may be discarded and some better
be used in its place.
Test all of your seeds. That is at
least a fair sample from all of the
seeds to be used in the spring. 1t is
very simple matter to make tests
of the following seeds corn, wheat,
oats, barley, fax, alfalfa, clover. mil
let, blue grass, bronze grass and timo-
thy. At least four kernels from each
ear of corn should be given a chance
to sprout. It's quite often the case
that several kernels do not take adj
vantage Of the opportunity They are
dead. 1t doesn't pay to plant them.
They make better hog feed than they
do seed corn. Grain that doesn't
gerlninate very we'll after it has been
thoroughly tested should be sold to.
the elevator and some other obtained
to take its place. Dead seed doesn't
do any good in the ground OF course
it returns a little fertility to the soil
but it is too expensive to use for that
purpose.
The rag doll tester is the cheapest
and best all-around corn tester that
we know anything about. II it We're
used for testing ali of the corn plant
ed in this county next spring it would
make big difference in the yield.
Simply because it helps to eliminate
NOT only tthe dead ears, but the weak
seed as we'll. 1t is the strong seed
corn that grows the strong stalk, that
produces the good ears, all other
things being equal.
few pie tins and blotters are all
the equipment necessary for testing
small grains, grass seeds or legumes.
Five or six samples of grain taken
from as many parts of the bin will be
a mighty fair indicator of what the
rest of the grain will do. Each Sam
pie should consist of one hundred
grains as then the percentage of ger
mination will be expressed by the
number of seeds that show good ger
mination.
The next time that you are in town
it would be well to stop in at some of
the offices and ask the men who have
them to give away to let you have a
few blotters to be used in testing
seed grain. Take a pie tin and cover
the bottom with a blotter, moisten it
and count out one hundred seeds that
you want to test, cover this with an
other blotter, noisten it some more
and keep all of the tins moist and
covered with another pie tin to check
evaporation.
We wish that all of the boys and
girls in. the rural schools would spend
at least a few minutes between now
and next spring in helping their
fathers test seeds of some kind. tIti
will be time well spent because if !
done it will be certain to-
increase the revenue from the farm
during the next year:
Test your seed grain not because
some one says SO, but because its
money in your pocket to do it.. Wei
are all trying TO make our business
more profitable. Good seed helps, be
sure and get at it.-A. w. Palm. Coun- T
~ Agent and Supt. B. r. A.
b Y