166 The Principles of Vegetable -Gardening 



Under the present-day conditions, it is only the excep- 

 tion that a man can afford to grow his own seeds. 

 With the development of intensive market -gardening 

 interests, seed -buyers are becoming more cautions and 

 discriminating; and probably one -fourth of all vege- 

 table-garden seeds are now sold to persons who grow 

 the product for market. 



It is costly business to grow good seeds. It requires 

 experience and the exercise of a man's undivided atten- 

 tion. No longer is it sufficient merely that seeds are 

 sown and that the crop is harvested. The seed -grower 

 must have an ideal and must work to it. His planta- 

 tions must be "rogued." That is, all those plants 

 which do not meet the breeder's ideal are pulled up 

 and discarded, and the true or typical stock is left to 

 produce the seed. The truer and higher the man's 

 ideal, the better his stock should be. It requires years 

 of experience to enable one to make for himself a true 

 and practicable ideal of any variety of plant. He must 

 know what the market wants. He must know what 

 his customers want. He must know what will be good 

 and useful under the greatest number of conditions. 

 He must know what will be likely to be most stable 

 and invariable. The ideal once apprehended, the seed- 

 breeder must thereafter discard every plant which 

 does not closely approach it; his stock must be uni- 

 form (Fig. 38). As soon as the "roguing" or selec- 

 tion is neglected, or when new ideals are introduced, 

 the varietal characteristics tend to disappear or to 

 change. 



Experience has demonstrated that certain soils and 



