HOW TO PLANT SEEDS 107 



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 percentage of 

 the seed fails to germinate the grower may provide against a poor stand with 

 a heavier seeding. Where the percentage 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 preceeding 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 subse- 

 quent growth of the germs. It makes little practical difference, 

 perhaps, whether the seed is killed or the germ perishes after start- 

 ing. 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 

 practice, which involves succession of small areas, must be enter- 

 prisingly venturesome. He must take some chances of losing a 

 sowing or planting and of renewing it, and he should always keep 

 adequate supplies of seed or seedlings at hand. It is a great deal 

 better to lose a sowing than to set up some arbitrary dead-sure date 

 for sowing; for with such a policy he will never have anything 

 early, and perhaps never anything profitable. Field work for staple 

 vegetables is another proposition, but field work for shipment of 

 early stuff is always attended by some risk, for the grower has to 

 venture everything on doing the best he can to be safe and early, 

 but to be early at any rate. 



Although this is true it must be always remembered that noth- 

 ing is gained in working the soil or sowing the seed when the soil 

 is not in condition to work well. Some results of this bad practice 

 have been mentioned in other connections and they are deplorable, 

 especially in the heavier soils. It is especially an error of judgment 

 in seed sowing to suppose that any time can be gained by sowing 

 early upon an unfit seed bed. Even if a fair stand should be secured 



