98 Years of Know How 
in Every Packet 
SCIENCE PLUS SOUND BUSINESS 
PRINCIPLES SINCE 1856 
The roots of the Ferry-Morse Seed Co. reach 
back 98 years. That Ferry-Morse ultimately 
should become the world’s largest grower- 
distributor of home garden seeds seems in 
retrospect an almost foregone conclusion. For 
both the founders, D. M. Ferry and C. C. 
Morse, not only were men of high integrity 
but far ahead of their contemporaries in 
realizing that a successful seed business in- 
volved forward-looking science no less than 
sound business principles. 
Plant improvement by hybridizing is now 
an almost casually accepted fact. But long 
before the turn of the present century, the 
scientific development of better strains and 
varieties of Ferry’s Seeds was in progress. The 
first Ferry introduction was announced in 1868 
and Detroit Dark Red, today the world’s 
most widely grown beet, was a Ferry introduc- 
tion of 1892. 
SEED BREEDING 
The now world-famous Ferry-Morse seed 
breeding stations were the outgrowth of this 
pioneering activity. Here, men long-expe- 
rienced in seed breeding are constantly at work 
creating flowers of better form, color, fra- 
grance, and vitality; vegetables of improved 
taste, yield, disease-resistance, and uniformity. 
The list of innovations is now long and impos- 
ing. As of this writing, there are over 300 
Ferry-Morse introductions of record, ranging 
from the lowly parsnip to fabulous sweet peas. 
OVER 40,000 ACRES 
The various crops of Ferry’s Seeds are grown 
from the Company’s own pedigreed stocks on 
farms totaling more than 40,000 acres. These 
farms are scattered North, East, South and 
West throughout the land in over 18 states 
where soil and climate are best suited for the 
production of individual seed crops. 
SEED TESTING LABORATORIES 
AND TRIAL GROUNDS 
Seeds that yield an abundance of vigorous, 
healthy plants are the first step to gardening 
success. Ferry-Morse maintains seed testing 
laboratories in California and Michigan where 
samples of every seed crop are subjected to 
regular and periodic germination tests. More 
than 52,000 such tests are made every year. 
To maintain the superior quality of Ferry’s 
Seeds, the Company operates 430 acres of 
trial performance grounds in California, 
Florida, Idaho, and Michigan. Here, more 
than 9,000 performance trials are conducted 
annually. 
SOLD IN OVER 100,000 STORES 
You can walk into over 100,000 stores in vir- 
tually every city, town and hamlet in America 
and select the Ferry’s Seeds you want when 
you want them. These include department, 
food, variety, hardware, and general stores, 
super markets, nurseries, and some florist 
shops and drug stores. No matter where you 
live, you are always close to a display of Ferry’s 
Seeds—the best seeds that money can buy. 
