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Show ! FARM NOTES ! BY HYRUM STEFFEN Beaver County Agent Farmers are Urged to Buy Good Seeds j With the approach of spring farmers begin to prepare for j planting their year's crops. One j of the mosit important items is the selection of seed because the seea will determine in large measure the success and value of the future crop. It is here .that many farmers are prone to practice false economy. econ-omy. They place too much emphasis em-phasis on price and not enough on the important factors such as purity, germination, trueness to type and freedom from disease, foreign matter and noxious weeds. In many cases cheap seed has proven to be enormously expensive. expens-ive. Practically all of our noxious weeds which we now spend thousands thou-sands of dollars to control and which threaten to expel us from the land are not native of this country tout were imported and planted by the farmers and gardeners in seed. There is also a significant difference in yield from the various grades of seed. Where a marked difference in grade exists the increased yield of the better grade is usually more than sufficient to pay for the difference dif-ference in price. Unless definite precautions are taken it is difficult to prevent the mixing of varieties. Thus it is a common experience for farmers to discover after their crop is mature a mixture of different varieties instead of the single variety they intended to purohase. In grains, such a mixture reduces the grade and the suitability for milling pur-(Continued pur-(Continued on last page) M FARMNOTES (Continued from first page) poses and thus reduces the price. Our experiment stations throughout through-out the United States have also spent years developing improved, high-yielding seeds which are resistant re-sistant to many plant diseases. D. C. Tingey from the Utah State Agricultural college, for example, has developed a high-yielding l winter wheat which is resistant to smut. This wheat has now large- ; ly replaced other varieties in the wheat sections of Utah and saved the farmers thousands of dollars. ' In buying good seed, therefore, a farmer can take advatage of the grca.t improvements which have been made by our trained plant breeders. Price is not necessarily a measure of quality in seed but usually if a farmer deals with reputable seed houses and distributors the desirability de-sirability of the seed is in proportion propor-tion to the price. The difference in price is usually insignificant when we consider the added advantages ad-vantages of the better seed. This is especially true with perennials such as alfalfa, where one planting plant-ing produces a crop which continues contin-ues to grow over a period of years. Every farmer's slogan should be: "I will buy only seed which I know to be pure, adapted to my conditions, true to type, free from diseases and weed seeds and of high germination". When in doubt as to the desirability desir-ability of a seed for planting the state seed analyst will test it for purity and germination at a very small cost. |
