1908. 
SEED SELECTION AND SEED SAVING. 
Experience Among the Truckers. 
Why is it that so little real knowledge seems to 
be applied along the line of better selection of seed 
to plant? One sees an article occasionally bearing 
on the subject, and several bulletins have been pub¬ 
lished, but they either do not hit the proper chord, 
or have not reached far enough. I believe there is 
no one leak on the average farm that needs closing 
quicker than that through losses by planting indiffer¬ 
ent seed. You can see at every hand where thi^ 
could be improved on. The too universal custom 
among farmers, and particularly truck growers, is 
to buy their annual supply of seeds from some glib- 
tongued salesman, or from some highly-painted pic¬ 
ture, or description in some catalogue, and many 
times the price has quite a weight in securing the 
order. This is an error, and just so long as the 
buying public demands a cheap article, that long 
will they receive it, and in most instances, the goods 
received will be cheaper than the price. Seedsmen 
are not to blame for catering to the wants of the 
buying public, but I believe the time fully ripe for 
the buying public to wake up to their own interest 
and demand something better than what is usually 
planted to-day. 
Another abuse tolerated by the farmer is the free 
distribution of seeds by Congress. Here is a prac¬ 
tice costing upwards of half a million of dollars to 
purchase and distribute something that is lowering 
the standard of agriculture wherever such seeds 
are received and planted. Every farmer or gardener 
who has attempted to do anything with this trash 
well knows the truthfulness of this statement. There 
is one commendable feature about these Government 
seeds, however; you seldom see any more of them 
after once planting them. Located as I am, and 
coming in touch with many prominent growers. I 
would like to say that here in the heart of the cen¬ 
tral trucking district of New Jersey, where toma¬ 
toes, peppers, cabbage, efc., are grown, the grower 
would no more think of trusting his crop to com¬ 
mercial seed than he would try to fly. I saw last 
Spring a certain strain of cabbage seed grown and 
saved by farmers, sell for $15 per pound, while at 
the same time same variety could have been pur¬ 
chased for $2.50 or $3 per pound from commercial 
seedsmen. Why is all this? The high-priced seed 
was a known quality, properly grown, selected and 
saved. 
Another lamentable practice, one quite as bad as 
the Government free seeds, is the practice of saving 
tomato seeds at can¬ 
neries. One can hardly 
pass an establishment of 
this character during 
the canning season that 
he does not see quanti¬ 
ties of seeds out drying. 
Bushels of this stuff are 
sold to farmers an¬ 
nually, and by many 
men who call themelves 
reputable seedsmen, too. 
The buyer can and does 
receive any variety 
asked for from this mis¬ 
cellaneous lot, and has 
numerous varieties 
thrown in. Just so 
long as the farmer will 
tolerate this usage, just 
so long will this busi¬ 
ness be continued—my 
contention is, that far¬ 
mers should, so far as 
possible, breed, select 
and save their own 
seed. It is a well- 
known fact that the 
larger and stronger the 
seed the better plant it 
will produce. Only a year ago I sent for, and ob¬ 
tained a package of a certain variety of tomato. I 
planted them alongside of same variety grown one 
year on my own farm, and seed selected and saved by 
myself. At five weeks from planting the purchased 
seed the plants therefrom were not more than half 
as large as the lot saved by me, grown here only one 
year. Why is this? Simply selecting good fruit to 
take seed from. Instances could be cited in endless 
number to bear out what has already been said, but 
enough has been said in an article of this kind. 
What shall the grower do? Get the best stock of 
whatever kind he wishes to plant to begin with; then 
select his own seed of all varieties that grow normally 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
in his locality. First by watching the growth of the 
plant, its strength and vigor, its ability to withstand 
disease, the amount of crop produced, quality and 
appearance of produce, earliness of ripening and any 
other point that the grower may notice. When crop 
is fully set and sufficiently matured to judge intelli¬ 
gently let the farmer go through his fields stakes in 
hand and select a sufficient number of plants for next 
year’s seed supply, staking each one. After doing this 
allow nothing to be gathered from these plants but 
the first and undesirable specimens that ripen. When 
time to gather seed (which should be when crop is 
at its best) the farmer, basket in hand, goes to his 
field. A further selection can be made at this time, 
rejecting any hill or plant that has not developed as it 
should. Gather fruit or vegetable for seed when 
fully ripe, let stay as picked for a few days, then 
separate. If wet seeds dry at once and in shade; too 
BORING FOR REACH BORERS. Fig. 06. 
rapid drying in the sun is harmful. Such seed will 
grow quicker, grow stronger, produce more and im¬ 
prove according to the amount of knowledge and care 
put in it. __ c. c. HULSART. 
GROWING PEACHES ON HILLSIDE. 
I will tell how we raise peaches, which may help 
others to make a success of it also. The site of my 
orchard, which consists of 2,000 trees, mostly Craw¬ 
ford Late, Stump, Salway, Elberta, Mt. Rose and 
Champion, is on a steep nothern slope of a gravelly 
hill. 1 he field was of little value for general farm¬ 
ing, being too steep in many places for the use of 
modern machinery. In the Spring of 1904 I went to a 
local nurseryman and bought from him second-class 
trees, most of them only whips. They had good roots 
and were free from scale. I had them delivered at 
' 
^ . fe a , : w f % 
,w : v -■ ■ Ai., A:---w.- v- ; v ' "^4^ 
Z - fv 
-J—J ...I, 
EVERGREENS ON THE RURAL GROUNDS. Fig. GT. See Ruralisms, page 150. 
143 
You may think it was a Herculean task to plant 
2,000 trees in one day. So it was, but I assure you 
we—eight of us—did it all in one day; dug holes, 
trimmed roots, puddled them in mud, and heeled them 
well in, and were done before the sun was set. One 
man brought the trees from the cellar, where they had 
been stored over night, only as fast as we planted 
them, to prevent them from drying out too much with 
a high wind which was prevailing. We loaded about 
200 at a time on a one-horse wagon, on which I was 
perched with a sharp jackknife to trim the roots to 
mere stubs and stick them in a mud-puddle in a 
large vat, also loaded on the wagon. With this outfit 
we drove through between two rows, one man on each 
side taking a tree out of the vat, setting it in a hole 
previously made, while another shoveled in the dirt; 
first the fine and on top the pieces of sod, the man 
holding the tree doing the tramping in. Two men 
went ahead digging the holes. The only tool used 
for digging was a good broad mattock. No shovel 
was needed to clean out the hole. It could be easily 
thrown out with the mattock on this steep slope. 
After the trees were set we cut them back to a stub 
about 18 inches high, and plowed two furrows toward 
each row. This plowing was the only cultivation they 
ever got with the exception of what we gave them 
huntmg the borers, which was done the following Fall, 
and every Spring and Fall ever since. Fig. 66 shows 
our method of hunting borers, which means get down 
on your knees and dig. First, when you notice gum 
at the base of the trunk, dig away around the tree 
with a dull-edged mattock down to the roots, then 
with a knife scrape the bark clean, and wherever you 
find hollow places under the bark dig; there you will 
find the borer. Do not give it up when one is found; 
I have found as high as 12 on one tree. I will say 
right here that the borers have given us more trouble 
than all other pests combined. In the Fall after hunt¬ 
ing the borers we throw the loose dirt back around the 
trunk of the tree, which saves them from being 
girdled by mice, which are a nuisance in a sod field. 
We sprayed the trees twice for scale since they were 
planted. The first time—in the Spring of 1906—we 
hired a gang that made a business of spraying. They 
used the salt, sulphur and lime wash. A heavy rain 
soon after washed it well off. In the Fall we sprayed 
again, doing it ourselves with a man-power sprayer 
on a hundred-gallon tank. We used 17 pounds sulphur 
and 22 pounds lime (omitting the salt) to 50 gallons 
water, and boiled it one hour with steam from a 
small portable boiler. This stuck to the trees well. 
A person could still notice traces of it this Spring. 
We mow the grass and weeds twice in a Summer 
with a two-horse mower, using the scythe to mow on 
the row, and let it lie 
where it falls. Each 
Spring we give a top¬ 
dressing of bone fertili¬ 
zer and potash with a 
little nitrate of soda, 
using 500 pounds mu¬ 
riate and 200 pounds ni¬ 
trate to 1,200 pounds 
raw bone meal. We give 
each tree from 1 to \V 2 
pound. What little trim¬ 
ming we do is done in 
the Spring, cutting out 
interlocking bran ches, 
and keep the center of 
the tree open to sun and 
air. This is a very cheap 
way of raising peaches 
on cheap land, and I be¬ 
lieve it is as successful 
as any. The trees are 
thrifty; perhaps not so 
large as if they had been 
cultivated, but it is 
peaches we are after, and 
not timber. 
" ; 
my place fresh from the nursery row. The next day 
after receiving them we planted the whole lot. The 
field had been marked off beforehand by stretching a 
chain, such as is used on corn planter for planting 
check row, and cutting a small hole out of the sod 
where each tree was to stand. Rows were made 16 
feet apart, and the trees stand 10 y 2 feet in the row. 
This, however, is closer than it ought to be. Eighteen 
by 15 feet I deem a more proper distance. The field 
was an old sod foul with weeds, such as ripple, 
wild carrots and dandelion, and in this we planted the 
trees. This may not compare well with approved 
methods of culture, but what we are after are the 
results for money and time invested. 
In spite of tf late frost 
last Spring which killed 
most of the peach and 
plum blossoms in the neighborhood, and a very dry 
Summer, we had a nice crop of fine colored and 
highly flavored peaches, which sold readily at $2 per 
half bushel basket. It is too early now to make pre¬ 
dictions for the coming season. h. s. weber. 
I have hail Tub Rural Nkw-Yorker since 1878—30 
years. I have seen this neighborhood change from land 
half cleared to a place with two villages in sight, two 
railroads, one electric street car line, one electric subur¬ 
ban line. Street light at one corner of the farm, and less 
than two miles to Minneapolis thrasher works, em¬ 
ploying over 1.200 men. If the farmer cannot go to the 
city surely the city is coining to the farmer; seven miles 
to the city market in center of Minneapolis. a. e. b. 
Hopkins, Minn. 
