Experimental ioor\, as well as seed growing, goes on continually at Burpee's Floradale Seed Farms in California and Burpee's 
Fordhoolz Farms near Philadelphia. 
Tests 
prove 
Burpee's 
Seeds 
Grow 
Burpee*s Experimental Grounds 
A glance at the picture across the top of this and the next page will 
give you some idea of the vast amount of experimental work that 
goes on each year at our Floradale Seed Farms. By hybridiza¬ 
tion and the selection of the best individual plants for stock 
seed, standard varieties are being continually improved and new 
ones created. Burpee has contributed much to horticulture. 
Our staff of expert plant breeders, with keen 
eyes and a knowledge of just what makes one 
plant better than another, go through our 
test blocks day after day selecting those 
plants which show special merit. To prevent 
pollinization by bees carrying pollen from 
some less desirable plant, the selected plants 
are “caged," or, in other words, completely 
surrounded and covered with a muslin net¬ 
ting. Some of the “caged” plants are those 
which showed signs of a “break” or “muta¬ 
tion” and from which an entirely new or 
better variety may be developed. 
The actual results of these long series of ex¬ 
periments, conducted both at Floradale and 
at Fordhook, are seen in the new and improved varie¬ 
ties of flowers and vegetables with which, year after 
year, Burpee has enriched the gardens of the world. 
At the left are pictured sections of the Trial or Proving Grounds 
at Burpee’s Fordhook Farms. Every variety of seed that we 
sell is tested for purity and vitality and compared with similar 
strains in cultivation so that the Best varieties always are 
offered to Burpee customers. 
Floradale Farms comprise hundreds of acres in the fertile Lompoc Valley, which is surrounded hy mountains opening out to 
the Pacific Ocean, 50 miles north of Santa Barbara. 
