OCR Text |
Show The percentage of alfalfa seed that will grow can be easily determined deter-mined by means of a simple tester. The seed should be thoroughly mixed, mix-ed, after which 100 or 200 seeds should be counted out. The seeds should be placed between two pieoeB of blotting paper or two folds of a piece of flannel cloth, care being taken'that the seeds do not touch one another. The seed container should be then put on a plate, well moiBtened without saturating, and covered with an inverted plate and the tester then placed where the temperature tem-perature can be kept at about 70 degrees de-grees F. After about three days the sprouted seed should be counted and removed each day until about the sixth, when most of the good seeds will have sprouted and the percentage per-centage that will grow can then be determined. Some hard seed are occasionally present in a sample. These may bo alive, but they re-quire additional time for germnatlon. In the case of Grlmra alfalfa as much as 3 5 per cent of th eed is frequently fre-quently hard. |