SEED SAVING

Waipa Post, Volume 38, Issue 2271, 21 February 1929, Page 4

SEED SAVING

DO WE SOW TOO MUCH OR TOO

LITTLE ?

In a very discursive note to the editor, Mr Andrew Kay makes reference to the vagaries of seed sowing or sown. He says: " Many of us who raise our own cabbage plants buy a packet of cabbage seed for the purpose. The seed and soil being the same colour, we cannot see the seed fall on the ground, and naturally are apt to sow too thickly. Cabbage seed is rather expensive to grow, as any amateur who has tried it will tell you. One difficulty is to keep the different varieties separate and true to name. Further, it may have been noticed that rape seed is very similar in shape and colour to cabbage seed, but it is cheap and easy to grow. The expert but unreliable seedsman finds it easy t<o sterilise 3 ounces of rape seed, to which he adds 1 ounce of cabbage seed, and sells the mixture as pure cabbage seed, very profitably. This artful dodge was exposed in England several years ago. Of how an unsuspecting amateur gardener mav be victimised the following is an example: Some years ago Samuel Jackson, the lawyer son of a Yorkshire farmer, built a new residence in Remuera, with a quarter-acre lawn in front. His gardener, after preparing the ground, asked Mr Jackson to procure seed to sow the lawn, and he consulted a seedsman and brought home 20 lbs of seed, which he, in an excess of zeal, immediately sowed, not waiting for the gardener's advice. He had not enough seed to finish the plot, and had to bring home a further 10 lbs of seed next day. Need I add that Mr Jackson had plenty of money, and was an amateur of amateurs as a gardener ? Any farmer buying seed should test the germinating average, and try a round lof the drill with half the regular amount of seed, and another with double the quantity of seed. The results should give a valuable indication of whether the cost of the seed was fair value. Doubtless many 'observers have seen in idle lanes or by-roads plants of ryegrass, cocksfoot, or red clover, each covering a square foot of ground; yet we are advised by experts to sow sixty seeds to the square foot of land! Is that because of poor germination, loss by bird activities, or to help the poor, struggling seedman to make a bare living ? In the early pioneering days of Waikato we knew of only white clover, red clover, and ryegrass. They were the only seeds sown. The ryegrass came from the Pukekobe and Wairoa districts."