The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. | Page 8

which the acid has turned red."
Albert did this and the boys watched interestedly to see the effect. "Back again," sang out Jack as the red litmus changed to blue.
"Now from this you see a way to overcome the acid conditions of Albert's piece of land, if it proves to be acid."
"I see," said Jack, "lime it."
"Exactly! Now see, Albert, if the paper has changed colour."
"My, I should say it had!" and Albert held up the piece of litmus paper, now quite red from its contact with the soil.
"Well, Albert, it is pretty plain to see what you have to do. Did you find out the amount of lime to use?"
"In the book I read it said for clay soils 400-2000 pounds per acre."
"I should say," said The Chief, "for that special piece of land use about 20 bushels to the acre."
"How many pounds of lime," asked Jack, "to the bushel?"
"I can answer," grandly went on Albert, "there are 70 pounds to the bushel. So that makes 1400 pounds."
"Quite a proposition!" said Jay.
"Yes, but your land is only a half acre and so that changes matters a little. How much is lime a bushel, Jack? Ask your father, will you?"
"I think," said The Chief, "that we'll have to lay a drain pipe through your land. Anyway I shall come around in early spring and have a look at it."
"Now Peter, we'll hear from you," Jay announced.
"My work was to find out how long it took different kinds of seeds to germinate, that is sprout. I took a dozen each of different seeds, put blotters in dishes, wet the blotters, and placed the seeds on these. I kept them in a warm place in the dining room. I have made each of you fellows a copy of the table."
PETER'S GERMINATING TABLE
Beans 5-10 days. Onion 7-10 days. Beets 7-10 " Peas 6-10 " Cabbage 5-10 " Pepper 9-14 " Carrot 12-18 " Radish 3-6 " Celery 10-20 " Tomato 6-12 " Lettuce 6-8 " Turnip 4-8 "
"I'd like to know what use a germinating table is, anyway?" asked Albert scornfully.
"Well," Peter replied thoughtfully, "it gives you an exact knowledge of the time to expect your seedlings to poke up. Now suppose radish came up in four days. The carrot you had planted didn't come up and after twelve days, discouraged, you plant more seed. Now two days later the first carrots you sowed begin to appear. If you had known that it took carrots from 12 to 18 days to germinate you'd not have made the mistake of planting again so soon. I think of another reason," went on Peter warming up to his subject. "Suppose you planted beet seed. You waited ten days; nothing happened; you wait two more and still no seedling appears; something is surely wrong and you plant over again."
"What could be wrong," asked Philip.
"The seed might be poor," replied Peter. "George has been testing seed," said Jay, "and he might tell us about it now, couldn't he, Chief? It seems to come in here." The Chief nodded.
"I have been finding out whether certain seeds which I happen to have on hand are worth planting or not. If any of you fellows have seed and wish to find this out, you can easily enough. So you can be sure whether old seed is worth planting. Now it happens that father had some of his last year's corn and some from four years ago. So I took 100 seeds of each. If you test small seed like lettuce, The Chief says 50 seeds will do. These I put on blotters just as Pete did his. Of course, I kept them separate. From last year's seed 90 seeds sprouted out of the 100, or 9/10 of them. And that equals 90 per cent. If all seed was 90 per cent. good it would be all right to use, I think. Now when I looked at the four-year-old seed, what do you think? Only five seeds had started. That makes only 1/20, or 5 per cent. Of course, no one would care to use seed where only 5 per cent. of the seed sprouted."
"Is there any real percentage of germination that seeds should have?" Jack asked eagerly.
"Yes," replied The Chief, "although value as you see from George's experiment is lost by age. The real standard germination value for corn is 87 per cent., for beans 90, for turnips 90, for peas 93, etc. You can see that the per cents. for these vegetables run high. So do not use seeds when the per cent. has dropped too low.
"Has George found out the time when other seeds lose value?" asked Peter. "I did not work this table out because I did not have the old seed to work with," replied George, "but The