124 CALIFORNIA VEGETABLES 



Take two dinner plates and pieces of cotton flannel. Boil them both to 

 destroy any mold spores or fungi they may contain. Upon an up-turned plate 

 place a layer of moistened cotton flannel. On this lay the seeds to be tested, 

 of the small seed say a hundred, and half the number of large seeds will do. 

 Over this place another moistened strip and cover with a similar plate. If 

 more than one variety of seed is to be tested at one time another strip may 

 be laid on top of the first set, the seed placed and covered as before, using two 

 pieces of cloth for each variety. This gives the seed an aerated and more or 

 less sterilized germinating bed. Set the plate in a somewhat darkened place 

 where temperature of 70 to 80 degrees F. during the day and, if necessary, 

 less than 50 degrees F. during the night, may be maintained. The length of 

 time required for germination will depend largely upon the nature of the 

 seeds, from six to ten days usually being required. Where only a small per- 

 centage of the seed fails to germinate the grower may provide aganist a 

 poor stand with a heavier seeding. Where the prcentage germinating is small 

 it is usually desirable to try for a better lot of seed before planting. 



GROWTH FROM SEED IN OPEN GROUND. 



Adequate heat and moisture are essential to germination and 

 subsequent growth. The preceding chapter has shown at what 

 times these factors are present in California soil, either by nature 

 or artifice of the planter. Heat is almost always adequate for the 

 germination of the seed in common vegetables, in well-drained 

 surface soil in the California valley regions. Even in our frosty 

 weather, the day temperature of the soil is adequate for germination 

 except, perhaps, during the colder storms and seldom does our 

 rain have too low a temperature. Even in this it is not so much 

 the matter of germination as of conditions inhospitable to the 

 subsequent growth of the germs. It makes little practical differ- 

 ence, perhaps, whether the seed is killed or the germ perishes after 

 starting. But the death of either seed or germ is more often due to 

 moisture lack or excess, than to temperature conditions. For this 

 reason a sowing may go for naught if seeding is done in the fall 

 without thorough moistening of the soil by irrigation or rainfall, 

 or the same disappointment may follow sowing even seed of hardy 

 plants in certain localities in December and January in years of 

 heavy rainfall. For these reasons it is all-important that the vege- 

 table grower should carefully observe his local conditions of soil 

 heat and moisture and arrive at proper deductions from his own 

 experience as to what acts he should perform under his ruling local 

 conditions and the peculiar phases of the weather of the particular 

 year in which he is acting. And then a vegetable grower, in garden 



