CHICAGO American Bulb Company NEW YORK 

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THE STORY behind 
apc. Seed Production. . 

1. Light wooden rollers drawn by a team are passed over 
the harvested seed pods to separate the seed and force them 
onto an underlying canvas. 
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2. Suspended sieve trays separate the coarse material from 
the seed and fine chaff allowing the seed to fall on clean 
canvas. 


SEED IS such an infinitesimal piece of life it hardly 
seems possible that it could be backed by much of a 
story. But from plant breeder to seed bin courses a series 
of events equal in interest and novelty to those occurring 
in any production line. Seed harvesting itself is an 
example. 
Nearly every seed has its peculiar harvesting problem 
which must be overcome to insure its arrival at your 
greenhouse in an acceptable condition. On the one hand 
you have phlox, which promiscuously throws seed from 
its pods, so that paper or canvas must be placed on the 
ground to catch the seed. On the other hand you have 
stocks or sweet peas, which are more inclined to retain 
their seeds. 
In the case of the latter, the pods must be broken either 
by passing through an adapted alfalfa cutting machine 
or through use of large but light wooden rollers drawn 
by horses, as in (1). 
The bulkier chaff is next removed by the movable tray 
in (2). Cleaning finer seed such as petunia and begonia 
is a very tedious task, requiring the use of specially 
designed trays. 
Your seed still is not ‘‘presentable’’ and must go through 
further processing as is shown in (3), a seed cleaning 
mill. The seed, nicely cleaned, is now ready for ship- 
ment—but first a sample is taken for germination test and 
for flower trial to be certain that it conforms with the 
requirements of A. B. C. “Supreme Quality.” 
A number of months may pass before you will need your 
seeds. Hence, each bag must be carefully labelled and 
stored as in (4). Our modern, 
brick and concrete warehouse and 
office building in Chicago is ideal 
for seed storage. A year-round 
cool atmosphere surpasses any at- 
tempt to date of artificial air con- 
ditioning and assures the best pos- 
sible germination of A. B. C. care- 
fully harvested seed at time of 
shipment. 

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3. Seed cleaning mill further refines 
the seed preparing it, nicely cleaned, 
for shipment. 
4. Proper storage is essential for 
maintenance of seed germination: 
Year-round cool atmosphere of A.B.C. 
storage rooms is ideal. 
