102 



The fundamental principles of breeding and selec- 

 tion necessary to maintain a strain or variety in 

 its original purity, to say nothing of improving the 

 same, are not sufficiently well understood by the 

 average gardener. Again, the land usually devoted 

 to home or truck gardening is usually too valuable 

 to be devoted to seed growing. Upon the other 

 hand, there will be occasional instances where the 

 small grower, and especially the large commercial 

 gardener, will have sufficient training and experience 

 to make the necessary selections and be able to 

 build up particular strains of many varieties espe- 

 cially well adapted to his own local conditions. 

 After all, the chief objection to home seed growing 

 is the fact that the seed crop is not generally looked 

 upon as a money-producing crop, and in the rush 

 of the season's work is usually neglected, result- 

 ing in seeds of poor vitality and crops of low vigor 

 and unsatisfactory yields. 



Whether seed be saved at home or bought in the 

 market, it is highly important that it be the best of 

 its kind. Poor seed is dear at any price. The ques- 

 tion of a few cents or even dollars per pound is of 

 little importance as compared with the difference in 

 value of a full crop of high quality and a poor crop 

 of inferior quality. A practice all too common (the 

 tendency toward which constitutes one of the chief 

 objections against home seed saving) is that of sav- 

 ing the seed from the inferior fruits left at the end 

 of the season. The writer has observed commercial 

 cantaloupe growers, time after time, going over the 

 fields after the good melons had been harvested and 

 frost had killed the vines, saving the seed indis- 

 criminately from the partially mature and worth- 

 less fruits left in the field. Little wonder that the 



