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The Selection of Your Plants and Seed 
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This is the first thought with me. I want to know that the seed I am going to 
plant is as good as can be grown. No matter what the cost. I count the price of good 
seed a second consideration. The same applies to all kinds of plants and nursery stock. 
The cost of production being the same whether we get 2,000 quarts of strawberries per 
acre or whether we get 10,000, the few dollars spent in the w ay of better seeds in the be- 
ginning is soon lost sight of in the biz yields, and big profits in the end. 
THE REASON THAT CERTAIN VARIETIES ARE RUNNING DOWN. 
In regard to strawberries I am asked this question many times during the year: 
“Can you tell me why certain varieties are running down; why they do not bear the 
crops they formerly did’? This is a very easy queston for one to answer if he has given 
it a little thought and has been a close friend of his berry patch. Here is the answer: 
When straw berry plants fail to fruit it indicates that they have become weakened 
through careless breeding and improper selection of the breeding bed. 
Runner plants always inherit the characteristics of the mother plant, therefore 
plants that come from unfruitful plants will be unfruitful. Ifa plant becomes so weak- 
ened that it no longer sends up a fruit, but system, 1ts energies will be thrown to the 
multiplication of barren plants, and as these ‘barren plants make a great many more run- 
ners than the fruitful plants, they soon have a monopoly. And plants taken from these 
beds year after year, without any selection whatever, it is but a natural consequence that 
the variety must sooner or later run out, as it is called Labor and money spent in the 
growing of those kind of patches is but thrown away. 
THE WAY TO BREED BETTER AND MORE FRUITFUL PLANTS. 
On the other hand, if a grower is particular enough in the selection of his plants 
he can always improve any variety instead of letting itrun down. Here is the method 
I use in order to build up better and more fruitful ‘strains of plants: I have a special 
plot each season that I use to grow my stock plants. I never set out the plants in this 
plot until the plants in the old breeding bed have made sufficient growth so that I can 
easily select my best plants, always sure to get nothing for this plot but what has a good 
strong fruit bud, selecting the heaviest crowns and alw ays the plants nearest the mother 
plant. By this means I know personally that every plant is a fruitful plant. This 
method is carried on from year to year and is proving very successful for me. I am not 
only keeping my plants up to the standard but I can see a marked PE ement in the 
most of the varieties in a few years’ breeding up of this kind. I find } oy this method of 
breeding that the higher breed the plant is the fewer runners it will make, as a large 
part of the growth is spent in building up a crown of fruit buds instead of making run- 
ners freely, as is done in Ute wild t berry or the variety that has almost become wild or 
barren through carelessne 
THE EARLIEST SEED THE BEST. 
In saving my Cantaloupe Seed I use about the same method as with plants, saving 
only the seed from the ver y earliest, best netted cantaloupes each season. No second 
choice for me. I believe that the best is none too good. 
Still many of my neighbors wait until the last of the season to save their seed for 
their own planting, waiting until the prices have dropped, so they say. They claim 
they can save all the seed they want after the prices have become unprofitable to ship. 
So they can, but some of them, I am sorry to say, are trying to market some very miser- 
able looking melons, even in the beginning of the season, Many of these growers do not 
mind paying $3.00 per ton for New York manure, but they don’t like to pay $1.50 per 
pound for seed. They want at least two pounds for that much money. 
Too much cannot be said along this line. To much thought cannot be given to the 
selection of our plants and seed. 
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This Catalogue Printed by THE SALISBURY ADVERTISER Co., Salisbury, Md. 
