Good seed

“ Whether you use ten cents' worth or ten dollars' worth, the best seed to be had will be the most economical to buy—to say nothing of the satisfaction that full rows give.
And yet good seedsmen are more thoughtlessly and unjustly abused in the matter of seed vitality than in any other. Inexperienced gardeners seem universally to have the conviction that the only thing required in seed sowing is to cover the seed with soil. What sort of soil it is, or in what condition, or at what depth or temperature the seed is planted, are questions about which they do not trouble themselves to think. ”

“ GARDEN SEEDS. Good seeds are the very first requisite for a good garden; soil and culture cannot make good crops out of bad seed.
1. As a general rule, buy your seeds. The reasons for it are so many and so good, that you will certainly do it, unless economy prevent; but it is better to economize elsewhere.
In the first place, seed-raising is a delicate business; and, for many reasons, will be better done by those who make it their business, than by those who do not. ”

“ If a farmer would raise good crops he must, as already stated, select good seed. Many of the farmer's disappointments in the quantity and quality of his crops—disappointments often thought to come from other causes—are the result of planting poor seed. Seeds not fully ripened, if they grow at all, produce imperfect plants. Good seed, therefore, is the first thing necessary for a good crop. ”

“ The best seed is saved from plants set apart for that purpose; for good seed comes from the first and finest flowers and not from those left over at the end of the flowering season. These plants should be sown in a little patch by themselves, should be allowed to run to seed, and carefully tended until the seed-pods are ripe enough to be gathered. If, therefore, you have not a large garden, it is best to buy most of your seed each year, using a little of your own, from which, however, you must not always expect the finest flowers. ”

“ In order to have a fine sward it is absolutely necessary that you must have good seed. Cheap seed—and that means poor seed, always—does not contain the varieties of grasses necessary to the making of a rich, deep, velvety sward, and it almost always does contain the seeds of noxious weeds which will make your lawn a failure. ”

“ Be sure that the seed you are sowing is good seed. Sow to the flesh, and a good harvest will be impossible. Good seed and bad seed cannot both succeed if allowed to grow together. One prospers at the expense of the other; and the likelihood is that the bad will get the upper hand. Weeds always seem to grow and spread more rapidly than good seed. ”

“ When the care requisite to select good seed stock, and the trouble, and, often, great loss, in keeping it over winter, planting it in isolated locations, protecting it from wind and weather, guarding it from injury from birds and other enemies, gathering it, cleaning it, are all considered, few men will find that they can afford to raise their own seed, provided they can buy it from reliable seedsmen. ”

“ It is simply ideal when after a planting a gentle rain comes—germination.
"I remember once seeing a garden which school children had planted so close to the surface that after a rain most of the seeds were lying all sprouted on the surface of the soil. Take care not to plant in such a manner.
"This talk has been largely for the purpose of bringing to your minds certain necessary points. Let me sum them up: Cheap seed are expensive because they are often full of impurities and lack vital power. Buy good seed and test them. Plant large seed, because the storage of food is greater. ”

“ Gathering seeds can be a delightful pastime. The following are most beneficial: seed heads of seeding grasses, Plantain, Chickweed, Shepherd’s Purse, Dock Groundsel, Clover, Teazle, Queen Anne’s Lace, Charlock, Smartweed, dandelion and thistles, except Burdock. These seeds are particularly good at moulting and mating times and a few are always relished as a treat. ”

“ It is a native of the East Indies, and, in general, good seed may be procured by keeping the plants constantly in a hot-bed or hot-house; but the best method is to raise them on a strong hot-bed, keeping them there till in flower, and then transferring them to the hot-house or dry-stove, to perfect their seeds. ”

“ Except in the respects mentioned, these methods of propagation are not notably superior to propagation by means of good seed, which, by the way, is not overabundant. By the consumption of a little extra time, any desired number of plants may be obtained from seed. At any rate, seed is what one must start with in nearly every case. ”

“ It is useless to expect good vegetables unless they spring from the most perfect and best variety of seed. “Do men gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles?” Those who cultivate but a few acres simply for family use, having learned the importance of choosing their seed with care, are every year becoming more and more particular in their search for the finest varieties. ”

“ Your good Queen was my very dear friend, and I was on my way to pay her a visit and show her a precious seed which I had just brought with me from a distant land when I came upon this scene of desolation.
"'"The seed I carried was a present from an owl who is over a thousand years old, and wiser than any fairy I know. It was the seed of the Wonderful Plant. Wherever it grows there it will remain for all time. It cannot be dislodged, and the owner of it will be rich and influential forever. ”

“ SOWING THE SEED Having now our frames provided and our soil composed properly and good strong tested seed on hand, we are prepared to go about the business of growing our plants with a practical certainty of success—a much more comfortable feeling than if, because something or other had been but half done, we must anxiously await results and the chances of having the work we had put into the thing go, after all, for nothing. ”

“ The importance of having good seeds has already been declared. They must not only grow, but grow into what we have bought them for--be true to name. Without the latter quality we cannot be sure of good gardens, and without the former they will not be full ones. ”

“ They should not be like a lead pencil, but more like your thumb, and flat on top. Feed regularly each morning, on either the mixed seed, or, as we prefer it, buy some good, clean, sweet, canary seed and summer rape seed, and mix them yourself, one part of the latter to two parts of the former; clean water each day, and a wee bit of nice, dry, fresh, green food, such as groundsel, watercress, lettuce, chickweed, or plantain, as they are in season. ”

“ Don't depend upon home-grown seed. Some of it may be just as good as that which can be bought from reliable seedsmen, but the probabilities are that it is not, because of the tendencies of most plants to "mix." ”

“ If possible it should be sloping toward the south, although we have had good success on level land well drained. One should have the best seed possible, and if you get hold of a good strain of seed that produces nice, velvety beans earlier than your neighbor, save as much of that seed as you can. ”

“ The improved seed was to do it all. However desirable it might be to obtain seed which could be warranted under all circumstances to produce heavy crops, (which of course can always be done after a certain fashion, by feeding it out to fowls,) this "good time coming" will not be hastened, we apprehend, by the public-spirited efforts of "Mr. Joab S. Sargent," notwithstanding the glowing prospects held out in the following advertisement:—
Farmers and Gardeners.—Attention!
Spanish Onion Seeds. ”

“ But first I was to prepare more land, for I had now seed enough to sow above an acre of ground. Before I did this, I had a week’s work at least to make me a spade, which, when it was done, was a very sorry one indeed, and very heavy, and required double labour to work with it; however, I went through that, and sowed my seeds in two large flat pieces of ground, as near my house as I could find them to my mind, and fenced them in with a good hedge, the stakes of which were all cut off that wood which I had set before, which I knew would grow; ”

“ If the supply of seed is large a germination test of seventy-five per cent. will justify its use but if there is only a limited supply it will be better to42 purchase fresh seed or at least sufficient to supplement the home supply. It is always worth while to save one's own seed if the vegetables have exceptionally good qualities ”

“ We wish present visible growth, and so we must be willing to lend aid, and first aid to such seeds is to give them a whiff of moist heat to soften what has become more hard than desirable through man's intervention. For in wild nature the seed is sown as soon as it ripens, and falls to the care of the ground before the vitality [Pg 47] of the parent plant has quite passed from it. That is why the seed of a hardy plant, self-sown at midsummer, grows with so much more vigour than kindred seed that has been lodged in a packet since the previous, season. ”

“ Give up the idea that by ruling over others you can do any good to them. But you can do just as much as you can in the case of the plant; you can supply the growing seed with the materials for the making up of its body, bringing to it the earth, the water, the air, that it wants. It will take all that it wants by its own nature. ”

“ So we plant seeds in rows on our dam-wall, and pull one up daily to see how it goes with them. Alladeen buried her wonderful stone, and a golden palace sprang up at her feet. We do far more. We put a brown seed in the earth, and a living thing starts out, starts upward—why, no more than Alladeen can we say—starts upward, and does not desist till it is higher than our heads, sparkling with dew in the early morning, glittering with yellow blossoms, shaking brown seeds with little embryo souls on to the ground. ”

“ Also in fingering the seeds, you will know why some are slow in germinating: these are either hard and gritty, sandlike, like those of the English primrose, smooth as if coated with varnish, like the pansy, violet, columbine, and many others, or enclosed in a rigid shell like the iris-hued Japanese morning-glories and other ipomeas. Heart of Nature is never in a hurry, for him time is not. What matters it if a seed lies one or two years in the ground? ”

“ The seed the gardener holds in his hand is a mystery. He knows what it will produce, but why one phlox seed will produce a red blossom and another a white is to him a miracle. He wonders at the prodigality of nature. In her economy, what is one or ten thousand seeds! She scatters them with lavish hand from ragweed, thistle or oak. If man could make but the single seed of the ragweed, he could make a world. The distance between a pansy and a planet is no greater than between man and a pansy. ”

“ Now that is precisely the point where your lessons in reading and spelling differ from your lessons about the Bible. When you sow seed in your memories, it is like laying up grains in a closed box. We do not expect them to grow; we are quite content if we find as many as we leave; we do not expect any fruit or growth. But when I sow seed in your hearts, it is like putting it into the ground; we want it to grow. ”

“ A great many people are willing to sow seed. There is an inspiration in the picture which the word "Sower" brings to the mind. I can never forget those days when the boys and girls just entering their teens took their spades and hoes, left the schoolroom with its algebra and technical grammar behind and went out into the glorious spring sunshine to plant their school gardens. On the various packages of seed were pictured the promised flowers or vegetables and with joy they looked forward to the day when they should be able to proudly exhibit the results of their planting. ”

“ Growing and saving commercial seed.—The ideal way is for the seedsman to grow and select seed as described above and give this stock seed to farmers who plant in fields and cultivate it, much as is recommended for canning, and save seed from the entire crop, the pulp being thrown away. ”

“ On the approach of warm weather this gum is softened, and ceases to be an hindrance to the expansion of the leaves and flowers. All this care is part of that system of provisions which has for its object and consummation, the production and perfecting of the seeds.—Paley.
1172. Why are the seeds of many plants enclosed in a rich juice, or pulp?
Because the matter by which the seed is surrounded, as well as being intended for the nourishment and care of the seed, is designed for the use of man and of animals, by whom the seed is set free to take its place in the earth. ”

“ Seeds are sown almost daily—flower seeds, such as annual carnations, petunias, antirrhinums, etc.; and vegetables, such as lettuce, leeks, onions, cauliflowers, cucumbers, tomatoes, etc. There are also the gathering and packing of forced flowers and rhubarb, and the forcing of these and other plants. When possible, seed-beds are prepared in the open. ”

“ In any case in which the selection is not done before the blooming period, some impurities must result. Even if it is done before that time, errors may occur, and among hundreds and thousands of individuals a single anomalous one may escape observation.
The conclusion is, that flower seeds as they are offered in commerce, are seldom found absolutely pure. Every gardener knows that he will have to weed out aberrant plants in order to be sure of the purity of his beds. I tested a large number of samples of seeds for purity, bought directly from the best seed growers. ”