42 Bulletin N0. 155 I
there; if not, then at a place as nearly like home as
possible. Wheat does not "run out" as is popularly
believed. It is generally the farmer who "runs out" by
failure to properly clean his wheat, by failure to keep up the
fertility of his soil, and by failure to properly prepare the '
seed bed. -
_ What, then, is the basis for the belief that a change of
seed wheat gives better results than the use of home-grown
seed? As a rule the Kentucky farmer sows his home-grown
seed without properly screening it, on poorly prepared
ground of the average fertility of his farm. Seed wheat
bought away from home usually comes well screened. The -
seed grower cannot afford to send out any other kind of seed.
The farmer pays a good price for the seed and thinks
(rightly) that he must give it a good chance. He usually
sows it on the best ground on the farm, which is given
extraordinary preparation. If he had followed the practice
of selecting his home-grown seed as carefully as the grower
of his imported seed had done, and had planted it on the
same kind of soil with the same preparation, the chances
are that he would have obtained as good results from his
home-grown seed.
The importance of sowing good seed was well illustrated
on the Experiment Station farm with the 1911 crop. There
_ were two grades of Harvest King wheat on the farm in
1910. One was well screened plump seed. The other was
wheat that had been slightly damaged in the shock, was not
well screened and was not intended for seed purposes. Part
of a field was sown with the poor seed, and part with the
good. The yield of the better seed was 29.5 bushels per
acre. and of the poorer seed, 26.3 bushels per acre, a differ-
ence of 3.2 bushels per acre.
As an illustration of the value of sowing home-grown
seed. the Illinois Station found on a three-year test that
home-grown Harvest King seed produced 1.8 bushels more
per acre than Harvest King seed imported from Indiana,
and 2.9 bushels per acre more than seed of that variety
imported from Michigan.