4 Colorado Experiment Station 
Pure, Live Seed Helps to Make Big Crops. —Even the most 
fertile soil, the best seed bed and the most careful cultivation 
will be useless unless pure, live seeds are planted. It is safe 
to say that with the same acreage and with the same cultural 
methods, and with the same care in harvesting, the yields of the 
crops in Colorado can be increased 10% to 15% by simply giving 
unusual attention to the use of pure, clean, sound and vigorous seed. 
Poor seed is often the only cause of crop failure. Poor seed is 
largely responsible for weedy farms. Weed control will be useless 
unless more attention is given to the use of pure seed. 
Is the seed purchased alive? Will it germinate vigorously? | 
Is the seed purchased filled with dirt, chaff and the seeds of such 
noxious weeds as wild oats, dodder, bindweed, poverty weed, cheat, 
sow thistle, wild barley and others? These are questions which 
give the farmer much concern. 
The grades of seed for seed purposes and the cost of the same 
should be largely determined by the percentage of live seeds they 
contain and by their percentage of purity. 
Clearly, there is but one way to find out the true value of a lot 
of seeds, and that is to give it a thorough test and analysis. It is 
usually impossible to judge of the quality of seed even by careful 
examination of handful after handful. The outward appearance 
of the seed will give one little idea of the vitality of the germ inside. 
Moreover, there are a number of weed seeds which are often asso¬ 
ciated with and may be easily mistaken for certain field seeds. For 
example, the seeds of alfalfa, yellow trefoil, white and yellow sweet 
clover and dodder have very much the same appearance and may 
be very easily confused. 
That good seed is one of the most important factors in crop 
production no one can deny. How to secure pure seed and how to 
make it possible to know whether the seed is reasonably pure or not 
is another question. 
It should be unnecessary to emphasize the need of pure seed. 
Everyone knows, or should know, that poor seed is the worst of 
economy; that low-priced seed is often the poorest economy. One 
lot of poor seeds carrying noxious weeds has made many a farmer 
years of work in eradicating them. It is recognized that the heav¬ 
iest tax on a farm is its weeds. We have probably seen cases where 
a single carload of seed infested with noxious weeds has wrought 
havoc in a whole community. 
When seed is tested, one gains reliable knowledge of one more 
factor in crop production. The farmer is in search of knowledge 
of as many of these factors as possible. Every farmer should know 
how his seed tests before he places it in the soil. The amount to 
plant per acre depends largely upon the result of this test. In the 
