All the boys but Jack and Myron tested their seed corn to be sure of its vitality.  Peter went a little further than the other boys.  He not only tested for general vitality, but he tested for vitality among the ears he had selected as good seed ears.  This he did in the following manner:  He chose twenty-five ears, and used four kernels from each ear.  First a soup plate was filled with sand.  This was moistened by dropping a little water on the sand.  Sand must not be too wet for this work.  He partitioned off the sand-bed into rows with cardboard between them.  On the cardboards was marked over each row of four kernels the number of the ear from which they came.  The sand was moistened each day.  Peter worked out from this the best ears for quick germination.

The next point to be considered in corn culture is that of the soil.  Soil for corn should be mellow and fine.  If it has vegetable matter or humus in it, then its value as a corn-growing soil is increased.  Fertilize well and plough, or if the plot is small, spade.  You ought to have surely eight inches of good, mellow soil.  In planting corn place five kernels in a hill.  You will remember that a hill means a place.  For corn which grows high make the hills four feet apart; while for the low growing varieties place three feet apart.  Cover the early varieties with one inch of soil; the later varieties with one-half inch.

As the corn shoots begin to appear every boy should appear with his hoe or cultivator, for one secret of good gardening is constant cultivation or stirring of the soil.  Water, as you know, rises in the ground and coming to the surface evaporates.  Now the point is to keep the moisture in the ground for the plant’s food supply.  So if one keeps stirring the soil he makes a layer of earth which stops the water as it rises.  We call this a mulch.

When the shoots are six inches high choose the three finest little corn seedlings in the group of five.  Pull the others out.  The reason for putting in five kernels in the first place, instead of three, is that some may not come up.  And, too, some that do come up may be poor and sickly.

Myron did a very stupid thing.  At least he called it stupid.  Some one sent him a packet of seed popcorn.  Myron thought it would be pretty interesting to raise some and supply the club with popcorn at its meetings all the next winter.  Now Myron did not know that from the corn tassels the pollen when ripe or dry blows all over the corn field.  This pollen falls on the silk of corn plants anywhere in the field.  The pollen fertilizes the plant and the ear of corn sets and grows.  Because the pollen being light is blown to such distances and because different kinds of corn can interpollinate, is reason enough for not planting different varieties of corn in one patch.

Myron’s popcorn and sweet corn fertilized each other and he got a corn which was a cross between the sweet corn and popcorn.  He learned a lesson of pollination, but at the expense of the corn crop.