DENING 
FOR 
HAW 
PU ERR 
Murder Will Out 
OU have heard probably of that case of 
strangling in my neighbors’ back yard? It 
was horrible! It didn’t take Sherlock Holmes 
to find out the reason of the wholesale slaugh- 
ter, for it involved not the death of one only 
but of many. It happened this way. Listen! 
My neighbor and I bought our flower seeds 
just as usual last spring, and planted them 
too. My little plants poked their heads up 
through the mellow earth and greeted gaily the 
first warm seasonal days. But over in my 
neighbor’s yard there was dark trouble. 
The earth was hard and packed and_ finally 
little weak plants struggled inthe ground. But 
they came up here and there in a discouraged 
way; and in some spots nothing at all ap- 
peared. We discussed it over the back fence 
until one evening an old Scotch gardener, hap- 
pening by, said “You’ve strangled them to 
death.’ And that’s the truth. They were 
strangled by the tightly packed earth through 
1. Seeds must have air, heat and water to start 
growing. These beans were planted in a porous soil 
and started when others (Fig. 2) in hard clay did not 
which the young plantlets, born after the 
fashion we discussed last month, were unable 
to push through. And then, too, there is always 
a great lack of air in tightly packed soil. 
Here is a bean seed. Break it open and see 
the embryo plant inside. The seed is made u 
of cells of protoplasm lying dormant until the 
conditions of water, heat and supply of oxygen 
are right; then the protoplasm les no longer 
torpid but starts life and work. Just take a 
few dry bean seeds, place them between two 
moist blotters, supply a little heat, too, and the 
seed starts into activity. The three essentials 
have been supplied. 
Again, seeds absorb water at a rate con- 
trolled by the water content of the medium. 
To illustrate this, let us suppose that seeds 
are placed in dry sand, in slightly moist soil 
and in soil with considerable moisture in it. 
The seeds in the last medium (wet soil) will 
swell more quickly; this is the first step in 
germination. Place these same seeds in water 
and they swell even more quickly. 
Again there may be plenty of water in the 
soil but the seed germinates slowly. How 
could this be? Take two flower pots of moist 
soil, place seeds in each; in the first press the 
soil firmly over the seeds; in the second lay the 
soil loosely over the seeds. Of course the seeds 
in the first pot germinate more quickly. Why? 
This is very simple: the seeds have been 
brought into close contact with the moist soil 
and very quickly absorb water. 
This, again, has a direct bearing on planting. 
You see the gardener plant the seed in drills 
and then firm the soil over them. He does it to 
hasten germination. Another point is brought 
out if we plant seeds in two jars of moist soil 
and place one in the ice box, the other in a 
warm room. The seeds in both cases have been 
pressed into the moist earth. But the seeds in 
the jar placed in the warm room start before 
those placed in the refrigerator. This shows 
the effect of temperature on germination. Did 
you ever plant a garden and then for several 
days have the weather cold? Little happened 
in the seed’s great life process during that spell 
of weather, but with a few warm days the work 
of germination started. So we do not start 
gardens in wet, cold weather but wait for 
warm days. 
There is a third requisite for germination; a 
supply of oxygen. To prove that oxygen is nec- 
essary for germination, oxygen must be cut off. ” 
How can that be done and how is it done in 
nature? Take a saucer of moist sand and plant 
some seeds in it, placing sand over the seeds. 
Take another saucer of heavy clay soil thor- 
oughly wet, and place seeds in this. Cover over 
both vessels with glasses and place in a warm 
spot. The seeds planted in the sand germinate 
first; in fact, the other seeds may refuse to ger- 
minate at all.. This proves that a certain 
amount of oxygen is necessary for germination. 
The heavy compacted soil has forced the oxy- 
gen out from between the soil particles. 
See now the reason why seeds planted in 
heavy, clayey soils refuse to germinate? 
Summing this all up: for the process of ger- 
mination heat, moisture and oxygen are 
needed. So do not plant seeds before the soil is 
warm. There must be a certain amount of 
moisture in the soil to hasten germination; 
and to bring the seeds in contact with the 
moisture press the soil about the seeds. Too 
much water in the soil holds back germination, 
for the soil becomes heavy and oxygen is shut 
out. This applies equally to over watering 
seeds after Ene thus choking off the nor- 
mal supply of oxygen. Remember, too, that 
when seeds are planted very deep, they again 
do not find sufficient oxygen. 
Do not for a. moment think that every seed 
in the world when placed under favorable con- 
ditions of heat, moisture and oxygen supply is 
bound to germinate. It is not. Other things 
enter into the process, natural things like old” 
age or defective starts. By this I mean that 
seeds may be gathered before they are mature, 
or they may have been frozen, too dry, too 
damp—just think of the things that might 
enter into a seed’s life. You cannot tell by the 
outward appearance of a seed what its 
internal worth is. Because of this peo- 
ple test seeds to see if they are worth 
planting. It is a simple, an interesting 
)\ eq 
_e >) 
(-- Xe 
= (SS 
— = 
‘things to apply. 
process. Take a saucer and line it with a piece 
of white blotter, or a circular piece of Canton 
flannel. Moisten and place the seeds on this. 
Over the seeds a second piece of moistened blot- 
ter or flannel should ie spread, and finally 
place a piece of glass over it all, otherwise 
the evaporation from the surface covering is 
rapid. Count out either fifty large seed or one 
hundred if small ones are being tested. Corn, 
beans and peas are of the first class; lettuce, 
radish, ete., are small seeds. Different seeds, of 
course, germinate at different rates. Lettuce 
seed germinate so quickly! let this test go on 
for several days until you feel sure no q_ 
more seeds wilk germinate. Then SN 
reckon up the percentage of germina- 
tion. Suppose out of one hundred let- 
Ss 
—— 
SS 
= 
— 
2. This was sown with beans on the same day as 
those shown in Fig. 1—but the soil was a heavy, wet 
clay, admitting no air 
tuce seed eighty germinated. Then the per 
cent. of germination is eighty. Use that seed, 
it is good. Seed ought to be seventy per cent. 
good to use at all. Another interesting side to 
this test is that of time: I mean you can tell 
how long in days it takes one kind of seed to 
germinate; how many days must be allowed for 
the germination of another kind of seed. Again 
these tests are not just things to do, they are 
In this way step by step the 
fundamentals of gardening may be built up. A 
far different attitude is felt toward a subject 
one understands. Gardening is applied botany; 
but it is rarely, consciously, at least, applied. 
All those conditions which directly affect the 
start of the seed may be applied right to the 
process of gardening; so that germination 
which has seemed to be a sort of technical sub- 
ject or a silly fussing over beans and peas and 
corn seed after all is the backbone of everyday 
garden work. 
Hach month we shall take up a portion of 
the great story underlying gardening. 
Don’t blame the seed if you get no young plants unless you have made a vitality test with damp blotting paper 
or cloth 
38 
