DiyrF;TOK of horticulture 661 



SESSIONAL PAPER No. 16 



over a long period. The ripened heads may be clipped off from time to time when 

 necessary and gathered in baskets and stored awaiting threshing. The threshing and 

 cleaning of carrot seed is a much more difficult task than handling beet seed. In order 

 to separate all the seed and to have all the fine hairs- and edges broken off, it should be 

 thoroughly dry and ripe before threshing and should only be threshed on a cool, dry 

 day. Probably two threshings will be necessary to obtain well rubbed seed. If small 

 lot-^ are being handled the seed may be separated in a bag by beating with a stick. 

 The ordinary fanning mill will clean and grade with the exception of removing the 

 sticks which it seems impossible to get rid of with ordinary fanning mills and sepa- 

 rators. 



Celery. — Although celery seed does not all ripen together, there being blossoms still 

 unopened at harvest time, this year's experience goes to demonstrate that it may be 

 successfully cut on the slightly green side, before a great deal of the early seed has 

 matured sufficiently to drop off. This appears to be a more practical way of handling 

 than by making several cuttings, for in the case of celery it is very tedious and expen- 

 sive work to gather small lots of seed as it ripens. Of course it will probably be neces- 

 sary to go over the plants once to get the earliest seed if one wishes to save it, otherwise 

 it will shell before the plant has sufficiently matured the major part of its crop. When' 

 cut, the heads, or stalks, as the case may be, should be handled very carefully, and, if 

 possible, should be handled on sheets, for celery seed, when dead ripe, and there will 

 always be in a portion in that stage, shells very easily. As celery seed is very expensive a 

 grower could afford to give special attention to these details. When cut green, the stalks 

 should be placed in a drying shed to dry before shelling. The shelling is more difficult 

 than with most seeds for there is always a considerable portion which will adhere to 

 the heads unless rubbed quite firmly. This, no doubt, is the fairly green seed, which 

 when ripened inside does not shell as easily as when ripened in the open. 



An experiment in which equal quantities of Winter Queen celery were cut on the 

 green side and allowed to ripen in the field, and gathered at intervals, gave results in 

 favour of cutting green. The green cut plants gave a yield of 2 pounds 7^ ounces of 

 No. 1 seed from thirty-four plants, while that cut ripe gave a yield of 1 pound 14^ 

 ounces from 34 plants. The ripe seed gave a fifteen day germination test of 72 per cent, 

 ■^hile the green cut plants germinated 93 per cent in the same time. 



The seed after being separated from the stalks was put through a Clipper fanning 

 mill, which did excellent work in cleaning the seed. 



Cdbhage. — From evidence obtained this past season, cabbage plants which ara 

 perfectly dormant do much better in the long run than those which have thrown up a 

 seed stalk while in the pit, the former appearing to be more thrifty and yielding larger 

 quantities of seed. It is difficult to decide when to cut cabbage plants like most of 

 the other vegetables. The early bloom is ripe before the mid-summer bloom has set 

 seed, so that no matter how the grower works it there is always an apparent loss at 

 harvest time. At the Central Farm this year the plan of cutting off the earliest pods 

 was adopted, while the later ones were left until harvest time wlien the whole plant 

 was harvested, as soon as the majority of the seed pods had commenced to turn yellow. 

 The seed in a cabbage pod commences to darken and harden before the pod dries up, 

 BO that if cut at the stage mentioned above the bulk of the seed will mature in the pod 

 and the loss due to slielling will be greatly reduced. The cabbage seed may be threshed 

 by flail or by machine, and a Clipper mill will do excellent work at cleaning it, as will 

 also the machine shown in fig. 2. 



Onions. — Onion seed, even if the whole field does not ripen together, which, how- 

 ever, it generally does, is easily gathered head by head. If thoroughly ripe it can 

 easily be sTielled by light threshing and with a fanning mill and low wind can be 



Ottawa. 



