64 



CONTROL SERIES No. 



by the farmer by his home methods of plunging the entire lot of seed into water 

 and skimming off the floating seed and debris, the resulting product would 

 naturally contain many seed of low or no viability. This would reduce the 

 average of any lot, depending upon the proportions of lower grade seed con- 

 tained, to a viability which might be only average and oftentimes below a 

 test which is considered desirable for the lot of seed as a whole. 



A much larger local production of onion seed during the summer of 1936 in 

 the Connecticut Valley will give us an opportunity to test and clean a greater 

 volume of onion seed during the winter of 1937. During this time it is hoped 

 to continue this experiment on a much larger scale. There is evidence, based on 

 the cleaning and tests of 1936, that with proper cultural and cleaning methods 

 a very good quality of onion seed can be obtained under local conditions, as- 

 suming that proper culture and harvesting have also been employed. 



The following table shows the weight of uncleaned seed for each of the ten 

 lots, the total weight of the cleaned seed, and the weight and \ lability of each 

 grade secured by repeated machine separations. 



Weight of Seed Grade No. 1 Grade No. 2 Grade No. 3 Grade No. 4 



Lot Before Clean Germi- Germi- Germi- Germi- 



No. Cleaning Seed Weight nation Weight nation Weight nation Weight nation 



Lb. Lb. Lb. Percent Lb. Percent Lb. Percent Lb. Percent 



♦This lot contained also 2.6 pounds of Grade No. 5, which gave a germination test of 59 percent. 



Studies of Flower Seeds 



Conducted by the Seed Laboratory in Cooperation with the Department of Floriculture 

 Olive M. Hoefle and Professor Clark L. Thayer 



At present many home flower growers purchase their flower seeds from local 

 stores of various kinds. The Seed Laboratory and the Department of Flori- 

 culture have cooperated this past summer in an effort to determine the quality 

 of seed sold by such dealers. The seeds were collected on the open market by 

 State Seed Inspectors, weighed and analyzed for purity in the laboratory, and 

 tested for germination and trueness-to-type under field conditions. Seeds of 

 104 lots (7 bulk and 97 packets) were gathered, comprising a goodly number 

 of the common flowers grown in small home gardens. Thirteen different seed 

 firms or wholesalers were represented and thirty-eight different kinds of flower 

 seeds, as follows: 



