The Rocky Ford Cantaloupe Seed Breeders Ass'n 
OUR METHODS OF HARVESTING ARE 
IMPORTANT TO YOU 
Our years of experience in growing 
cantaloupes for seed have demonstrated 
to us the necessity of certain practices if 
this seed breeding is to be successful. 
The use of these methods is of import¬ 
ance to you because it often means the 
difference between good seed and poor 
seed. Since this is important to you, we 
want to take some time here to explain 
to you what methods we use, why we use 
them, and how they affect your crop. 
An important cantaloupe grower made 
this statement to us during the past sum¬ 
mer: “The two most important factors 
in raising cantaloupes are seed and the 
seed bed.” All that you can do about 
the seed is to find a reliable seed grower 
upon whom you can depend to sell you 
good seed. All that we can do about the 
seed bed is to impress upon you the 
necessity of giving careful attention to 
this phase of your work. Therefore to 
secure a successful beginning for a 
cantaloupe crop, the seedsman and the 
grower must co-operate. It is up to us 
to give you the best seed that it is possi¬ 
ble to grow, and it is up to you to give 
that seed your best care and attention. 
In order to furnish you with the best 
possible seed, we grow and harvest all 
our own seed. We never buy seed on the 
open market or from a farmer who has 
harvested his own crop. We have made 
it our rule to grow and harvest our own 
seed so that we will know exactly what 
kind of seed we are selling you. Because 
of this practice, you can depend upon our 
seed and know that it will be of the kind 
and quality that we state. 
All of our seed is hand-cut, washed in 
sluice boxes and sun-dried. It is hand-cut 
because this method permits us to select 
each individual melon that is saved for 
seed. If a single melon is not Up to type 
or quality it is discarded in the hand¬ 
cutting process. In machine cutting this 
selection is not possible. Although hand¬ 
cutting is more expensive, we always 
hand-cut our melons for seed because we 
can give you a higher quality. By wash¬ 
ing the seed in sluice boxes and sun dry¬ 
ing it, we eliminate the chance of me¬ 
chanical damage to the seed and reduce 
the dangers of mechanical mixture of 
varieties. These methods have all been 
adopted with the idea of giving you a 
better grade of cantaloupe seed. 
Our years of experience and our meth¬ 
ods are your insurance for good seed. 
We hope that you will make use of them. 
The seed cutter shown here has just tossed away one half of a cut cantaloupe from 
which the seed has been extracted. Note the half melon still in the air as he begins 
to scrape the seed from the other half. All our melons are hand cut in this manner. 
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