HINTS ON SOILS AND FERTILIZERS 51 
er’s time during this busy period. It is a fact 
that a great many farmers do not test out the 
germination of their seeds before planting their 
seed, often with disastrous results. In fact, 
often a farmer has to replant an entire crop 
because of the failure of his seed to. germinate. 
The quality of the seed also is a matter 
worthy of consideration. Is it worth while to 
pay a little more for seed of good quality, such 
as corn, for instance, or shall the farmer go 
to the local elevator and purchase a lot of or¬ 
dinary crib corn for planting purposes? To 
be sure, he can get crib corn for just about 
market price, whereas he would have to pay 
two or three dollars a bushel for good seed 
corn. But he can make many times the dif¬ 
ference in his yield of corn by paying a little 
more for good quality seed corn, that has been 
selected for high yield, and that has been cured 
properly, than he can by trusting to the out¬ 
come of his cheaper corn. The same problem 
of proper seed applies to other crops; I have 
only taken corn as an example to illustrate the 
situation for all crops. 
We have seen in a previous chapter that light 
is essential for the manufacture of plant food 
by the chlorophyll present in the leaves of the 
plant. This is a factor generally beyond the 
control of the farmer, as he has to take the 
light as it is given to him by the sun. But the 
fact remains that crops have to have a certain 
amount of sunlight to make this plant food, 
although some plants demand much more sun¬ 
light than others. In fact, some plants re¬ 
quire very little sunlight to mature. This is 
