PUYALLUP, WASHINGTON 
9 
PUDOR'S, INC., 
A on H°u?o Ahouk. DeCpklnium. Seed-i 
SUCCESS OR FAILURE! • 
Have you ever realized that gardeningr, the sowing of seeds, the 
planting of flowers and bulbs, is more or less a gamble? Your seeds 
may germinate or they might not; ants, slugs, fungus, birds may 
destroy them, excessive dampness or extreme heat and drouth may 
kill them before you are aware of it, or, if you are lucky and all 
things favorable they will germinate beautifully and grow and 
thrive and bring joy to your heart. Bulbs may be eaten by mice and 
moles, killed during the winter by unusual weather and soil condi¬ 
tions, or planted in the wrong place, sometimes up side down, and 
“that little brown bulb” of yours that holds the mystery of life, will 
never spring up into being. 
Even plants are often an uncertain quantity; pests and disease 
will kill them off, severe winter weather, no protective snow, freez¬ 
ing and thawing—the arch enemy of perennial plants in the winter— 
will kill them. It’s all very discouraging and you will feel like giving 
up; you vow you are through with seeds; you wil never grow any 
more perennials, “only annuals for me” or vice versa. BUT NOT SO 
IP YOU ARE A GOOD SPORT. You must be a good sport if you 
garden. As Richardson Wright said several years ago in House & 
Garden, “Do you desire to gamble? Stake your tender flowers 
against the coming frost, or the beating of rain, or the lashing of 
summer winds. Constantly the gardener is gambling—gambling 
against the elements, against blights and diseases, against the out¬ 
come of the seed sown in the soil and the bulb buried in it.” So WE 
say, if you are not a good sportsman, if you get easily discouraged 
and want to give up, instead of trying and trying again until you 
finally succeed, if you make mistakes and are blind against them, 
and blame the other fellow, then quit gardening, especially the sow¬ 
ing of flower seeds. BUY YOUR PLANTS MADE TO ORDER. 
Now, about DELPHINIUM SEEDS in particular. Our advice is 
if you have never grown highly bred delphiniums from seeds before, 
don’t waste your money on expensive seeds; experiment with a 
cheaper grade that will give you often beautiful specimens. Buy a 
fifty-cent package from us composed of seeds from many different 
plants, not just one variety. 
We think delphinium seeds are as easily grown as asters—if you 
once know how and use good judgment. Many people fuss too much 
over them; many keep the seed bed too wet and drown the seeds 
and the germs. Proof of this is when people complain that their 
small seedlings turn yellow and die off (damp off) they think that 
the seedlings are too weak from weak seeds. Put that down, if your 
seedlings of whatsoever kind turn yellow and die, they are what is 
called “damping off” from an excess of moisture or damp condi¬ 
tions; often the soil is badly infested with fungus, bacteria that 
attack the seed germs. STERILIZE YOUR SOIL, and you will find 
a vast difference in germination, too. 
We do not plant our seeds in cold frames—very little in flats and 
that only in February in the greenhouse with a little bottom heat. 
Often customers turn their seeds over to greenhouse men to grow, 
with the usual result that they fail to germinate. There are two 
reasons for this failure, we think. One is that the greenhouse man 
isn’t much interested in someone else’s seeds and does not exercise 
the care and judgment he would with seeds bought with his own 
money, and mainly, that the seeds are kept too hot. Delphiniums 
do not like warm, moist greenhouse conditions; seeds germinate 
best in a cool greenhouse (60) with a little bottom heat. At least 
they do it for us. 
The great bulk of our delphinium seed that produce the tens of 
thousands small seedlings that we sell every year in the Fall and 
Spring, is sown right outside in the field in long rows. And, by the 
way, we use the same seeds we sell you, the same quality of the 
same age. 
Seed that produce the seedlings we sell you in the Spring, is sown 
outside in early August, as soon as the seed is ripe. If the ground is 
dry, and it usually is with us here in the late summer, we sprinkle 
overhead every few days, using no sacks or papers over the seed 
row. In 10 days to two weeks the tiny germs break through the soil, 
which must not bake in the hot August sun, at any time, or the loss 
would be great. With the individual sowing a small quantity of 
seed, it would be best to sow the seed in a half shady, or shady loca¬ 
tion either right outside or in flats, remembering that the soil in a 
flat requires less watering, and also dries out much quicker than in 
an outside bed. If you use paper or sacks over your seed bed, keep 
close watch after ten days, for if you fail to remove it promptly 
many germs will die. Do not put coal ashes over your seed bed, as 
one customer wrote us he did; a little finely sifted charcoal prevents 
the “damping off” trouble. 
We make another large sowing “outside” in the late Spring, 
about the first of May, for our Fall seedling trade. We find that 
such seedlings are stronger and grow faster than the late summer 
sowing; though we do not transplant them, leaving them stay in 
the seed row until sold in the Fall, or planted in our own field to 
grow into large plants the following year, many of these small seed¬ 
lings will produce a fine blossom stalk during September and Octo¬ 
ber—5 MONTHS FROM THE SEED! If we transplanted the little 
seedlings, say during June, as you should do if you sow seeds in 
April and May, ALL WOULD BLOOM. 
We find no difference in the percentage of germination with our 
EIGHT MONTHS OLD SEED from the August sowing; only this 
difference: it will take three and sometimes four weeks, if condi¬ 
tions are not favorable, for the seeds to germinate. 
We again repeat to impress you: this Spring sowing about May 
1st, is done from the seed harvested in July and August. Sometimes 
we harvest seeds as late as September 30, but the bulk of the seed 
is July and August crop. Most of the resulting seedlings will bloom in 
September—FOUR MONTHS FROM SEED SOWING!—and many 
WHICH DID YOU HAVE? 
seedlings when not crowded too much in the seed row, will be so 
large by September that we sell them locally for small clumps. And 
then some wise people will come out in print and shout to the 
garden world: You can’t grow delphiniums from seeds in the Spring, 
last season’s seeds won’t germinate. What bosh! And the pity is 
that many people swallow such advice and believe it. 
One more word about the fertilizer we use in our “outside” seed 
beds. Very little bonemeal and some little lime sprinkled over the 
soil and then cultivated into the soil; then the seed is sown in a tiny 
marked furrow, practically on the surface, then lightly tamped down 
with the back of a hoe or rake. Sometimes places of an inch or 2 
or 3 in length are encountered which will be bare of seedlings, in¬ 
variably caused either by too deep covering or a mole or field mouse- 
has gone under it—but mostly by too deep covering. That, friend,, 
is the great bane to successful germination, another one being too. 
much moisture or not enough. Very little artificial watering is done 
in the Spring, as rains are usually plentiful, and during the dry 
months of July and August, they are only watered when absolutely 
too dry, as otherwise they would grow still faster than they do. 
SOWING SEEDS IN FLATS. When we make a few sowings irf 
the early spring of some new and rare seeds that we want to push 
along for an early summer bloom, we sift a mixture of one-third 
clean, sterilized garden soil, one-third fine clean sand and one-third 
finely sifted peat moss; this makes an ideal mixture for seeds. In 
this the precious seeds go, AFTER a previous thorough soaking of 
the soil done the day before sowing. If the soil is at all sticky 
another day is waited. After the seed is planted about inch deep 
and again sprinkled—not soused so the seeds will be washed out of 
the soil—a double layer of newspaper is put over the flat (not gunny 
sacks) and daily Inspected for moisture. Whenever watering is 
done, it is done very carefully and very little. 
Did you know that ants, sowbugs, birds and even mice will de¬ 
stroy your seeds and germs? That slugs will eat the little germs 
during the night as fast as they come through? Perhaps you never 
see them and don’t suspect them; look at the under side of your flat 
and find out what is eating your seedlings. 
So if you don’t succeed the first time, try, try again, even so the 
pill is bitter, but don’t blame the seeds the first thing you do: it 
seems so ridiculous to put it mildly, that some customers will accuse 
us of sending them old seed—why should we? Isn’t your success our 
success? If you only could realize how anxious we are for you to 
succeed. 
If we could sell all the seeds we gather every season, we could 
soon retire, then what object would we have to send you old seeds 
when we have an abundance of fresh seed which we throw away in 
May, after we have made our Spring sowing, and start anew with 
fresh seed in July and August. Rare and choice seeds, as from our 
DREAM and WHITE WONDER of which we get only a compara¬ 
tively small amount, are always soon sold out after harvest, and we 
turn down many orders; we don’t have enough left for our own use. 
And finally how could we grow and sell tens of thousands of seed¬ 
lings, if our seeds were poor and didn’t germinate well? Has this 
thought ever occurred to you? Some skeptic will say, “Oh, you 
keep special seeds for your own use.” Wrong again, for it is all the 
very same seed out of one can or bin, and please remember that the 
seeds from which we obtain most of our seedlings is sown in April 
and May first, from the previous year’s seed crop, at that time 
FULLY 8 MONTHS OLD. 
If you are a beginner, or haven’t the time or patience to look 
after your seeds we would thank you not to buy Delphinium seeds 
from us: buy from the other fellow and rake him over the coals or 
BUY OUR SEEDIjINGS; you will then have something to show for 
your money every time and don’t waste your money on seeds. 
A final advice: Don’t sow expensive seed of whatsoever kind all 
at one time; divide the lots into three parts and sow each portion 
at three different times; though you may not be aware of it, condi¬ 
tions might be different at each sowing, at one time just right and 
you will get a lot of nice seedlings, all from the SAME SEED. 
We sowed, of course, seeds of all our different strains and vari¬ 
eties during August in the open field, needless to say with the usual 
good success. Seeds from our 55/66 and the first class Whites ger¬ 
minated best: the PRIZE WINNER strain did itself proud, too; 
the WHITE WONDER seeds of which we sowed 1/16 oz., germinated 
fully 60%, not as well as the others. All flower seeds vary at differ¬ 
ent years; much rain during the blooming time or an extreme lack 
of it, plays an Important role in the fertility of all flower seeds. One 
thing is dead sure, we growers of flower seeds can’t make seeds to 
germinate any better than nature wills; about the only things we 
can do, is to give the plants the best care while blooming and seed¬ 
ing, and SELL YOU FRESH SEED. Any honest, square seedman 
will do this every time, whether an individual or a big firm. The 
rest lies in your hands and head. 
On the next page are extracts from a few customers’ letters, 
written to us of their own free will, telling us of their experience 
with our 1937 delphinium seeds; they speak for themselves. Other 
letters have come to hand, too, telling us of failures, accusing us 
of selling old seeds and heavens knows what! In every case where 
the customer hinted that he might have been at fault, or acknowl¬ 
edged that he was at fault, we have duplicated his order free of 
charge, except in the case of WHITE WONDER, of which we had 
no more seeds. 
If you buy Delphinium seeds from us this Spring and sow it under 
proper conditions and watch it carefully, you should be successful in 
raising at least 60% seedlings from the seed. We do better than 
that. If you have the facilities, sow the seeds as early as February, 
or in March and April, but don’t grow them in a warm living room 
or over steam pipes. 
