EXPERIMENT STATION BULLETINS. 405 



VARIETY TESTS OF VEGETABLES. 



BY L. E. TAFT, 



Bulletin No. 109. — Horticultural Department. 



For several years it has been the custom of this department to make 

 careful tests of the varieties of vegetables sent out by the different dealers 

 as novelties, and to issue the results in bulletin form at the end of the 

 season. Many of these so-called new sorts are sold at prices much above 

 those of standard varieties, but although highly praised by the introducers^ 

 are not always worthy. On the other hand, they are often greatly 

 improved strains of some of the old and valuable sorts or new and distinct 

 varieties of marked merit, and would then be desirable acquisitions. 



The purchaser can only determine their value by actual trial, and for 

 any one person to purchase and grow all the highly praised varieties sent 

 out in a single season will require a large expense in money and time. 

 The experiment station can do this work and the reports of the results of 

 the trials will be of value to every one who purchases garden seeds. It 

 must be admitted, however, that in many cases we are one year behind the 

 time, but the grower will have the report for use the next year and by that 

 time the cost will be reduced so that a start can be obtained with a smaller 

 outlay. It is desirable, and the seedsmen are each year doing it more and 

 more, that promising novelties be submitted for trial, to some half dozen 

 experiment stations in different parts of the country, who make a specialty 

 of testing varieties, the year before they are catalogued. Before a seeds- 

 man takes up a novelty he generally tests it for at least one season upon 

 his own trial grounds, and if, when he obtains a sample of a variety which 

 he proposes to introduce should it upon trial prove desirable, he would send 

 a sufficient amount to some of the experiment stations, or require th& 

 originator to do so, not only might it save the public from loss should it be 

 inferior, but, if it has real merit, a report to that effect by the stations. 



