NINETEENTH ANNUAL MEETING. 221 



without rusting - . I told him, "I am afraid you cannot grow 

 it." "Well," he said, "you do not give me very much en- 

 couragement. I have a plantation of asparagus and it seems 

 to be all dying out because of the rust." Some progress has 

 been made by the use of spraying, but I am told that up at 

 Concord. Mass.. experiments have been made which show 

 that the best prospects for overcoming that trouble have been 

 found along the line of selecting the plants which resist it. 

 » Furthermore, we can select plants for productiveness. Select 

 the potato plant for the large number of tubers which ma- 

 ture, and increase your crop in that way. Select the cucum- 

 ber which has the largest number of female buds for vour 

 stock seed. I went into our greenhouse a day or two ago. 

 and I went to one hill, and on one of these plants I found 

 twenty females, and on the other I found five. Xow it would 

 be best to select your seed from the plant which shows the 

 largest prolificness. The vegetable grower should not onlv 

 exercise much care, but he should be careful in the selection 

 of the seed of the variety. I think we often plant seed with 

 too much carelessness. Why? The Geneva. X. Y.. Station 

 studied the influence of the size of seed on crop production. 

 They took the cabbage as one of the illustrations. Thev 

 selected a large tract, and culled all the cabbage seeds from 

 the largest plants, and then they selected the seed from small 

 cabbages, and planted the seed of both and raised the plants, 

 putting one right alongside of the other. In every instance 

 they had the largest crop of cabbages from the larger seed. 

 They had a larger crop of cabbages with the larger seed 

 than from those plants raised from the small seed. I main- 

 tain that a small sized plant indicates weakness. If we plant 

 those seed from year to year that increases the weakness. 



Xow I will speak very briefly on the question of market- 

 ing our crops. It does not all depend upon the growing of the 

 crop by the fruit grower. If. however, the product is not 

 put upon the market in the right shape sales will be slow. 

 Attractiveness of a product may be obtained bv so simple a 



