Anise hyssop in the honey plant test gardens. 
Atlantic, Iowa, some were dead and 
others in weakened condition. It was 
late spring but a few of them thrived 
and the seed was carefully saved for 
the purpose of making increase 
enough to give the bees a chance to 
see what they would do with it. 
It seeds freely but the seed is very 
fine and must be kept moist during 
germination and until the young 
plants are well rooted. Our first 
planting did rather poorly. The seed 
bed was well prepared and the seed 
sown on top of the ground leaving the 
rain to cover it. Frequent periods of 
very dry weather resulted in a poor 
stand. 
Our second attempt was much 
more successful. This time a good 
seed bed was prepared as before but 
after the seed had been sown we 
scattered a very light coating of 
straw over it to shade the germi¬ 
nating seed from the sun and to pre¬ 
vent the soil from drying out so 
quickly. This time the result was 
very pleasing. Thousands of young 
plants soon appeared and although 
there were times when there was 
serious lack of rainfall, they con- 
