16 



PROPAGATION OF PLANTS BY MEANS OF SEEDS 



the same crops are grown for market purposes; tomatoes in New 

 Jersey, New York and Michigan. Okra in Georgia, Alabama and 

 Mississippi and other southern states. The difficulty of securing 

 good seeds for market is greatly increased for biennials, such as 

 cabbage, cauliflower, sugar beets, and garden beets. While much 

 seed of this class came from France, the world war made it neces- 

 sary to change the source of supply. California came to produce 

 more beet, onion, cauliflower and cabbage seeds than before. 

 Study closely the map, figure 9. 



Trial Grounds for Seeds. — Many large seed companies main- 

 tain trial grounds for seeds (Fig. 10) Three main purposes are in 



Fig. 9. — Chief sources of vegetable and flower seeds of the United States. (D. S. D. A.) 



view. (1) To select and breed new varieties. (2) To firmly estab- 

 lish and fix the most promising varieties before offering them to 

 the public. (3) To test the uniformity and stability of new varie- 

 eties that are offered by other growers. 



Buying Seeds. — It usually pays to study garden seed catalogs 

 carefully. Much may be learned by such study. Some catalogs 

 are too high in their praises of new varieties. In some cases these 

 are old varieties under new names. In other cases they prove to 

 be very similar to old varieties. ' ' Be not the first by whom the new 



