“If you save seed from your own plants you are able to choose carefully.  Suppose you are saving seed of aster plants.  What blossoms shall you decide upon?  Now it is not the blossom only which you must consider, but the entire plant.  Why?  Because a weak, straggly plant may produce one fine blossom.  Looking at that one blossom so really beautiful you think of the numberless equally lovely plants you are going to have from the seeds.  But just as likely as not the seeds will produce plants like the parent plant.

“So in seed selection the entire plant is to be considered.  Is it sturdy, strong, well shaped and symmetrical; does it have a goodly number of fine blossoms?  These are questions to ask in seed selection.

“If you boys and girls should happen to have the opportunity to visit a seedsman’s garden, you will see here and there a blossom with a string tied around it.  These are blossoms chosen for seed.  If you look at the whole plant with care you will be able to see the points which the gardener held in mind when he did his work of selection.

“Last winter we had quite a discussion on corn seed selection.  So we will not discuss that further.  Only let me say this for the benefit of the girls in order to show them the care which must be exercised in selection.  Should a finely formed ear of corn have one or two black kernels on it, then that shows a cross or taint, do not use such an ear for the old trouble may crop out.  Take an ear of seed corn, notice the small and rather undersized kernels at the top; do not use these.  Select kernels, the largest, plumpest and best shaped.

“In seed selection size is another point to hold in mind.  Suppose Peter had bought a package of bean seed.  Pull the little envelope out of your pocket, young man, and open it up.  Just look at those seeds as Peter spreads them out here.  Now we know no way of telling anything about the plants from which this special collection of seeds came.  So we must give our entire thought to the seeds themselves.  It is quite evident that there is some choice; some are much larger than the others; some far plumper, too.  By all means choose the largest and fullest seed.  The reason is this:  When you break open a bean—­and this is very evident, too, in the peanut—­you see what appears to be a little plant.  So it is.  Under just the right conditions for development this ‘little chap’ grows into the bean plant you know so well.

“This little plant must depend for its early growth on the nourishment stored up in the two halves of the bean seed.  For this purpose the food is stored.  Beans are not full of food and goodness for you and me to eat, but for the little baby bean plant to feed upon.  And so if we choose a large seed, we have chosen a greater amount of food for the plantlet.  This little plantlet feeds upon this stored food until its roots are prepared to do their work.  So if the seed is small and thin, the first food supply insufficient, there is a possibility of losing the little plant.