The following winter The Chief gave Friday afternoon talks to his boys and girls. These meetings did not in any way interfere with the boys' regular Saturday evening club.
Immediately after school each Friday afternoon they all trooped round to The Chief's little house, which had become a centre of village interest. Finally the men came too, for they had found out that this man knew of what he spoke.
But we are wandering away from those Friday afternoons.
There was the strangest collection of stools and benches in The Chief's side entry, all belonging to the boys and girls. "You must each one bring your own seat, because you all know that I haven't chairs enough to go around." And this called forth the collection.
It was an odd sight that first Friday in early November. A long straggly line of boys and girls, each one with a seat of some kind, wound its way up to The Chief's hospitable door, where he stood waiting, laughing aloud at the sight. In they came, and made a semi-circle about the big fireplace.
"I just love this room," said Albert, voicing the feelings of them all.
"I have thought," began The Chief, "that since our really successful first year of gardening, we ought to be in a position to undertake and to desire to know more about certain subjects which I shall discuss. Each Friday I am going to take up a topic such as I should if I were teaching you in school."
"You do not mean that we'll have to remember and answer questions just like school? You surely do not mean that, Big Chief," broke in Albert.
"No," replied the man laughing, "no, you may forget it all if you like. Remember it, if it seems to you useful. But if it's a strain on you, Albert, make it your business to forget."
They all laughed at this, but none so heartily as Albert himself. "That's one on this old head of mine," he said, banging that member up against the side of the chimney.
"My first talk I have given you in part, but I have more I wish to add. I believe even Albert can stand it. The subject is the soil.
"Soil primarily had its beginning from rock together with animal and vegetable decay, if you can imagine long stretches or periods of time when great rock masses were crumbling and breaking up. Heat, water action, and friction were largely responsible for this. By friction here is meant the rubbing and grinding of rock mass against rock mass. Think of the huge rocks, a perfect chaos of them, bumping, scraping, settling against one another. What would be the result? Well, I am sure you all could work that out. This is what happened: bits of rock were worn off, a great deal of heat was produced, pieces of rock were pressed together to form new rock masses, some portions becoming dissolved in water. Why, I myself, almost feel the stress and strain of it all. Can you?
"Then, too, there were great changes in temperature. First everything was heated to a high temperature, then gradually became cool. Just think of the cracking, the crumbling, the upheavals, that such changes must have caused! You know some of the effects in winter of sudden freezes and thaws. But the little examples of bursting water pipes and broken pitchers are as nothing to what was happening in the world during those days. The water and the gases in the atmosphere helped along this crumbling work.
"From all this action of rubbing, which action we call mechanical, it is easy enough to understand how sand was formed. This represents one of the great divisions of soil—sandy soil. The sea shores are great masses of pure sand. If soil were nothing but broken rock masses then indeed it would be very poor and unproductive. But the early forms of animal and vegetable life decaying became a part of the rock mass and a better soil resulted. So the soils we speak of as sandy soils have mixed with the sand other matter, sometimes clay, sometimes vegetable matter or humus, and often animal waste.
Constant Cultivation of the Soil Saved George's Cabbages
Constant Cultivation of the Soil Saved George's Cabbages
"Clay brings us right to another class of soils—clayey soils. It happens that certain portions of rock masses became dissolved when water trickled over them and heat was plenty and abundant. This dissolution took place largely because there is in the air a certain gas called carbon dioxide or carbonic acid gas. This gas attacks and changes certain substances in rocks. Sometimes you see great rocks with portions sticking up looking as if they had been eaten away. Carbonic acid did this. It changed this eaten part into something else which we call clay. A change like this is not mechanical but chemical. The difference in the two kinds of change is just this: in the one case of sand, where a mechanical change went on, you still have just what you started with, save that the size of the mass is smaller. You started with a big rock, and ended with little particles of sand. But you had no different kind of rock in the end. Mechanical action might be illustrated with a piece of lump sugar. Let the sugar represent a big mass of rock. Break up the sugar, and even the smallest bit is sugar. It is just so with the rock mass; but in the case of a chemical change you start with one thing and end with another. You started with a big mass of rock which had in it a portion that became changed by the acid acting on it. It ended in being an entirely different thing which we call clay. So in the case of chemical change a certain something is started with and in the end we have an entirely different thing. The clay soils are often called mud soils because of the amount of water used in their formation. The slate that Myron brought for road making belongs to the clay family, and so does shale.
"The third sort of soil which we farm people have to deal with is lime soil. Remember we are thinking of soils from the farm point of view. This soil of course ordinarily was formed from limestone. Just as soon as one thing is mentioned about which we know nothing, another comes up of which we are just as ignorant. And so a whole chain of questions follows. Now you are probably saying within yourselves, how was limestone first formed?
"At one time ages ago the lower animal and plant forms picked from the water particles of lime. With the lime they formed skeletons or houses about themselves as protection from larger animals. Coral is representative of this class of skeleton-forming animal.
"As the animal died the skeleton remained. Great masses of this living matter pressed all together, after ages, formed limestone. Some limestones are still in such shape that the shelly formation is still visible. Marble, another limestone, is somewhat crystalline in character. Another well-known limestone is chalk. Perhaps you'd like to know a way of always being able to tell limestone. I'll drop a little of this acid on some lime. See how it bubbles and fizzles. Now Albert will drop some on this chalk and on the marble, too. The same bubbling takes place. So lime must be in these three structures. One does not have to buy a special acid for this work, for even the household acids like vinegar will cause the same result. Albert will prove this to you.
"Then these are the three types of soil with which the farmer has to deal, and which we wish to understand. For one may learn to know his garden soil by studying it, just as one learns a lesson by study.
"I believe the boys from their last winter's work feel fairly familiar with soils, I have in these three tumblers the three types of soil. As I pour water on them just see what happens. Observe how little water it takes to saturate sand. The limy soil holds more water and the clayey an amazing quantity.
"I do not know whether you are much acquainted with the sea shore, I doubt it."
"I am," broke in Katharine, "for each summer, except this last one, I have spent a month at the beach."
"Then possibly you can tell us, Katharine, whether, or not, the sand takes in, or absorbs, much heat during the day."
"Indeed it does absorb heat; why some days we used to go barefooted on the beach right after dinner. I can tell you there were times when we couldn't stand the heat of the sand."
"That is quite true," continued The Chief, "sand absorbs heat to a remarkable degree. This heat is, to be sure, in the upper layers of the sand. Had Katharine burrowed down with her toes below those upper layers she would have found moist, cool sands. But an upper layer of soil, made up of particles which fall apart easily because of the loose make-up, a layer which has absorbed little water and much heat—well, to me that sort of soil doesn't sound quite right for good gardening. Add to such a soil, humus in the shape of stable manure in large quantities and this same poor soil becomes very good.
"Now here is the lime soil tumbler. This soil has taken up rather more water than the sand took. But it, too, surely needs to develop greater power to take in and hold water. So the same sort of medicine which we gave the sandy soil may be dealt out to the lime soil. Lime is a pretty good substance to have in soil. Lime is a kind of fertilizer in itself; it's a soil sweetener; it helps to put plant food in shape for use, and causes desirable bacteria to grow. This sounds a bit staggering but all of these things I am going to talk over with you. So just at present forget it, Albert, if it is a heavy burden.
"The clay soil, you observe, has taken in quite a quantity of water. That seems like a good thing. It is. But clay has a mean little habit of squeezing tightly its particles together with the aid of water so that air is excluded from the mass. It forms huge lumps; it bakes out and cracks badly; and it is also very damp, cold and soggy in early spring.
"As the problem with sand is to add something so that more water may be held in the soil, so the problem with clay is to overcome that bothersome habit of baking and caking and cracking. To do this we might add sand or ashes. But perhaps it would be better yet to add manure with a lot of straw in it. This is the easiest kind of thing for country boys and girls to get, because the bedding swept out of horses' stalls is just the thing.
"When I speak of clay's horrid habit of tight squeezing, I always have to stop and talk about the two great needs of all soils. One is the need for water; the other, for air. A soil cannot exist without these two things any more than we can. Without these, or poorly supplied with them, a soil is as if it were half-starved.
"That trouble always comes from a lack of one or the other is quite sufficient to prove to us that these are essential. Just see how sand lacks water, as does lime soil too! But there is plenty of air space, unless these soils are too finely powdered. Now look at clay! plenty of water, but how about the air? When clay begins its packing, then air is excluded.
"So one of the questions to be asked in soil improvement concerns the water and air problem. We must have air spaces, and we must have water-holding capacity.
"Before we go home I must just speak of soil and subsoil. When you strike your spade down into the earth and lay bare a section of the soil this is what you see: on top is the plant growth, the soil beneath this, dark in texture and about our locality of a depth of from six to eight inches. This layer is called the topsoil. In sections of the West it is several feet in depth. Now below the topsoil is a lighter coloured, less fertile, more rocky layer, the subsoil. Beneath comes a layer of rock.
"And finally you may be a bit confused by the word loam. It is often given as one of the classes of soils. By loam we mean clay, sand and humus. You will often hear people speaking of a sandy loam or a clayey loam according as there is a greater percentage of sand or clay in the soil.
"Next Friday I shall talk about soil fertility. So trot home lively now!"
A soil, as I have said before to the boys, may contain all the food necessary for plant growth and still not support any good growth at all. That means then we ought to be able in some way or other so to understand the soil that it will be possible to unlock these good things for the plants to live on.
"I see a question in Josephine's and Miriam's faces. I guess that this question is concerning what the plant food is in soils. That is right, is it not?
"Well, I'll take that up first, then;—different ways of improving and increasing the goodness of the soil.
"The foods that are necessary and essential to plants and most likely to be lacking in the soil are nitrogen, potash and phosphorus. Now by no means must you think that these are the only chemicals which are foods, for there are something like thirteen, all of which do a share in the food supply. Oxygen and carbon are very necessary indeed. Oxygen is both in the air and in water. Carbon plants take entirely from the air. I might go on and tell you of iron, of sulphur, of silicon and all the others. But you would only get confused, so I am going to make you acquainted with these three entirely necessary ones. They are capricious; often missing, and when not missing hard to make into available food for plants.
"The soil contains many bacteria, small living organisms. These may be divided into two classes, the good ones and the bad ones. The good ones acting on nitrogenous matter put it in shape for the plant to absorb or feed upon. You see nitrogen may be in soil in quantities sufficient for nourishment. But unless it is in a compound available for use, it is of no value to the plant. Then there are the bad bacteria which act upon nitrogen in such a way as to form compounds which escape from the soil as a gas. That is pretty bad, is it not?
"How can the good bacteria be encouraged to grow, and the bad ones prevented from forming? The necessary conditions for the growth of good bacteria are air, water, darkness, humus matter and freedom from acid condition of the soil. If the soil is acid then these other 'chaps' set up their work; so we must see to it that our soils are well cultivated, well aired, have plenty of manure, and, if acid, have a liming, so that these bacteria missionaries can start their good work.
"The manure I spoke of above is the great source of nitrogen upon which most plants depend. There is nitrogen sufficient right in the air, but that again is not available. Certain plants like beans, peas and clovers belonging to the family of legumes are a great deal more fortunate than the rest of the plant families, for, under favourable conditions, they develop bacteria which make it possible to take into themselves free nitrogen. Just look here! See this narrow box; I can drop down one side of it. Here is a sheet of glass put on so you may look at the roots of the beans which are planted close to this glass side. Just observe the great extent of root system. Now see on the roots these white lumps, or nodules as they are called. These contain nitrogen-gathering bacteria. Some farmers in order to get more available nitrogen in the soil plant a crop of some legume. Then these root masses with their treasures on them are spaded into the soil.
"But most plants depend for nitrogen on manure. Whenever you see sickly looking foliage know that nitrogen is lacking, and supply manure in order to obtain it.
"The next element is potash. Its most common source of supply is wood ashes, not coal ashes. One may buy potash in the form of the muriate or sulphate. I told the boys before that potash was good for seed and fruit. Pretty necessary to have in the soil, is it not? Stunted fruit and poor seed mean lack of potash. Phosphorus helps in this work too, and also assists in the forming of fine flowers. Bone ash and phosphates are the sources of this food element.
"So if we just consider the classes of soils with which we have to deal, remember the foods that must be had, and the effects on plants where one (or all) of these is lacking, we have in our hands a help to soil troubles.
"Take sandy soil—what is its greatest need? I should say humus. It certainly should have more nitrogen. So add humus in the form of manure. Spread it on your piece of garden plot anywhere from two to six inches deep. This spaded in will, I think, do the work. You see sand allows water to trickle away too fast. Water must be held properly in the soil.
"The clay soil really needs air. The good bacteria will not work without this. So spade the soil up in the fall, and leave it weathering in huge lumps. Sand or ashes added in the spring helps the air question too. A sprinkling of lime over the surface tends to sweeten the entire soil; for clay soil, so often too wet, is liable to get sour. Lime also adds another plant food called calcium. It would not be bad to add some humus in order to have an even greater supply of nitrogen.
"The lime soil, light and sweet, needs humus too. It should have this to add body and ability to hold water.
"Sometimes it is well to add in the spring a sprinkling of phosphates; that is a chemical fertilizer. Chemical fertilizers are like tonics to the soil.
"All this very briefly puts us in touch with plant foods. I think you all know from your school work that plants take their foods in liquid form. These solutions of foods are very, very weak. That is another reason why we should see that, if possible, there is plenty of nourishment available in the soil, and plenty of water too.
"These bean roots and rootlets show the feeding area or places of plants. Notice the small roots which apparently have a fringe on them. These fringes we call the root hairs. These absorb, soak up the dilute food which is in the soil.
"It is very wonderful what power they have of penetrating the soil. See the bit of blotter I have put down the path of one bean's root course. It would seem to shut the rootlets entirely off from the soil.
"Jay will gently press the bit of blotter away from the soil. See here and there how these root hairs have wound their way through the blotter to the soil, their feeding place. It is well that plants have this power of seeking and finding food. Because it greatly increases their food chances.
"So much very briefly for plant food. I have not told you very much to be sure, but it is quite enough, I think, for a 'starter,' I wish to tell you a bit about the plant itself soon. A few experiments may liven up the subject. So I shall ask Josephine, Miriam, and Ethel to attend to those for us. We can take turns at demonstrating as Jay and Albert have to-day. So you girls must remember to drop in to see me—say, Wednesday of next week."
Now before we begin just have a look at these geraniums. They have turned entirely around again and are looking out of the window at the sun. The power which plants have to move is very clearly shown, is it not? I am going to talk a little this afternoon about seeds.
"Any reliable seed house can be depended upon for good seeds; but even so, there is a great risk in seeds. A seed may to all appearances be all right and yet not have within it vitality enough, or power, to produce a hardy plant.
"If you save seed from your own plants you are able to choose carefully. Suppose you are saving seed of aster plants. What blossoms shall you decide upon? Now it is not the blossom only which you must consider, but the entire plant. Why? Because a weak, straggly plant may produce one fine blossom. Looking at that one blossom so really beautiful you think of the numberless equally lovely plants you are going to have from the seeds. But just as likely as not the seeds will produce plants like the parent plant.
"So in seed selection the entire plant is to be considered. Is it sturdy, strong, well shaped and symmetrical; does it have a goodly number of fine blossoms? These are questions to ask in seed selection.
"If you boys and girls should happen to have the opportunity to visit a seedsman's garden, you will see here and there a blossom with a string tied around it. These are blossoms chosen for seed. If you look at the whole plant with care you will be able to see the points which the gardener held in mind when he did his work of selection.
"Last winter we had quite a discussion on corn seed selection. So we will not discuss that further. Only let me say this for the benefit of the girls in order to show them the care which must be exercised in selection. Should a finely formed ear of corn have one or two black kernels on it, then that shows a cross or taint, do not use such an ear for the old trouble may crop out. Take an ear of seed corn, notice the small and rather undersized kernels at the top; do not use these. Select kernels, the largest, plumpest and best shaped.
"In seed selection size is another point to hold in mind. Suppose Peter had bought a package of bean seed. Pull the little envelope out of your pocket, young man, and open it up. Just look at those seeds as Peter spreads them out here. Now we know no way of telling anything about the plants from which this special collection of seeds came. So we must give our entire thought to the seeds themselves. It is quite evident that there is some choice; some are much larger than the others; some far plumper, too. By all means choose the largest and fullest seed. The reason is this: When you break open a bean—and this is very evident, too, in the peanut—you see what appears to be a little plant. So it is. Under just the right conditions for development this 'little chap' grows into the bean plant you know so well.
"This little plant must depend for its early growth on the nourishment stored up in the two halves of the bean seed. For this purpose the food is stored. Beans are not full of food and goodness for you and me to eat, but for the little baby bean plant to feed upon. And so if we choose a large seed, we have chosen a greater amount of food for the plantlet. This little plantlet feeds upon this stored food until its roots are prepared to do their work. So if the seed is small and thin, the first food supply insufficient, there is a possibility of losing the little plant.
"You may care to know the name of this pantry of food. It is called a cotyledon if there is but one portion, cotyledons if two. Thus we are aided in the classification of plants. A few plants that bear cones like the pines have several cotyledons. But most plants have either one or two cotyledons.
"Some plantlets, as they develop and start to push above the ground, bear along the cotyledon. This is true in the case of the bean. Jack and Peter have planted corn and beans in this box, not to have succotash but to show you about the habits of seeds. See the bean plantlet, big, sturdy, fellow, is still clinging to its seed leaves or cotyledons, its baby nourishment. Now look at the corn: there is absolutely no sign above ground of its one seed leaf.
"So from large seeds come the strongest plantlets. That is the reason why it is better and safer to choose the large seed. It is the same case exactly as that of weak children. Look at Myron, great strapping fellow! Hasn't he a fine chance in the world? Do you remember that little sickly boy who was in school last spring? He was as old as Myron, yet see how handicapped he is. Try not to bring weak little plantlets into the plant world. Bring strong, sturdy, healthy ones by careful seed selection.
"There is often another trouble in seeds that we buy. The trouble is impurity. Seeds are sometimes mixed with other seeds so like them in appearance that it is impossible to detect the fraud. Pretty poor business, is it not? The seeds may be unclean. Bits of foreign matter in with large seed are very easy to discover. One can merely pick the seed over and make it clean. By clean is meant freedom from foreign matter. But if small seed are unclean, it is very difficult, well nigh impossible, to make them clean.
"The third thing to look out for in seed is viability. We know from our testings that seeds which look to the eye to be all right may not develop at all. There are reasons. Seeds may have been picked before they were ripe or mature; they may have been frozen; and they may be too old. Seeds retain their viability or germ developing power, a given number of years and are then useless. There is a viability limit in years which differs for different seeds. This matter, along with directions for testing, the girls may get from our club secretary, Albert. All of this we took up last year in our preliminary garden work before we started outdoor work.
"From the test of seeds we find out the germination percentage of seeds. Now if this percentage is low, don't waste time planting such seed unless it be small seed. Immediately you question that statement. Why does the size of the seed make a difference? This is the reason. When small seed is planted it is usually sown in drills. Most amateurs sprinkle the seed in very thickly. So a great quantity of seed is planted. And enough seed germinates and comes up from such close planting. So quantity makes up for quality.
"But take the case of large seed, like corn for example. Corn is planted just so far apart and a few seeds in a place. With such a method of planting the matter of per cent, of germination is most important indeed.
"Small seeds that germinate at fifty per cent. may be used but this is too low a per cent. for the large seed. Suppose we test beans. The percentage is seventy. That per cent. would pass you in school, but it does not pass muster here. For if such low-vitality seeds were planted, we could not be absolutely certain of the seventy per cent. coming up. But if the seeds are lettuce go ahead with the planting. Peter will pass around these germinating per cent. tables which he has printed for you. I'd advise you to paste these in your garden diaries. After a test refer to this table which is from a United States Agricultural Dept. list for seeds not over one year old. You then know at once whether the seed is worth using.
"After being sure of good seed the next step to consider is when to plant the seed. It is well to start certain seed inside and so get a bit ahead of the season. Other seed may as well wait, and be planted out in the open when the ground is warm.
"Such vegetable seed as the following may be started inside.
"Flower seeds I will take up later because I wish to think over the flower garden by itself.
"When shall we plant seeds outdoors? Now no one under the sun can say plant such and such a seed on May 30th or April 1st. It is the same absurd case as saying change your winter clothes for summer ones on May 1st. Many writers will cover this subject by saying plant seeds when the earth is warm. But even that is a pretty general sort of direction.
"Nature has given us a planting guide. She tacks her notice on the fruit trees. When those early blooming trees, the peach and the plum, put out their beautiful blossoms the first planting time is on. To be sure the temperature then is a bit low, only about 45 degrees, so the planting is not of the more tender vegetables. Get your seed of beet, carrot, cabbage, cauliflower, endive, kale, lettuce, parsley, parsnip, onion, pea, radish, turnip and spinach. These may all be planted.
"The next signal to watch for is given by the blooming of the apple trees. This is the planting time for the more tender seed. These need a temperature of about 60 degrees in the shade, real apple-blooming time. Corn, beans, egg plant, melon, squash, cucumber, pumpkin, tomato and pepper seeds may be planted.
"But when is the time to put out the hotbed, or indoor-started seedlings? When the apple blossoms drop their petals and have passed by is the signal for them to go into the ground. Of course, they naturally would be the last, for they are made very tender from their glass-grown coddling.
"When it comes to the planting of seed there are certain things to remember always. First the ground should be made very fine. This is an easy matter if the planting is done in the hotbed, but more of a problem in the outdoor garden. It is foolish to plant at all if one does not intend to do things right. So work over the seed bed thoroughly. After all is fine and deeply worked, say to about a foot deep, the next thing to consider is this—how deep should a seed be planted?
"The depth depends upon the size of the seed. Take such small seed as poppy, parsley, even lettuce, and these may be just sprinkled on the surface of the ground. Then tread them in with the foot or place a board over them and walk on the board. In this way the small seed are pressed into the soil quite sufficiently.
"For seeds in general the following might answer for a rule: There are seeds like corn, oats, wheat and the grasses which come up unhampered by their seed leaves. Such seed may be planted deeply—say ten times the thickness of the seed. Other seed like beans, squash, radish, etc., push and carry their seed leaves up through the soil with them. So these, because of this extra work, should be planted nearer the surface. Four or five times the thickness of the seed is a safe rule to follow.
"When the seed becomes entirely or nearly saturated with water then germination begins. Sometimes people soak their corn in tepid water before planting. This hastens germination. But on the other hand if the soil is very wet and cold the soaked seeds may rot in so much moisture. Certain seeds have very thick coverings. Canna, date and nut seeds are examples. Their cases are so hard and absorb moisture so slowly that germination is a long process. To hasten this little holes may be drilled in the case, thus giving the plant germ a chance to get out. Nurserymen crack the nuts in order to help matters along. You can readily see what a really difficult piece of work it is for a tiny embryo or baby plant to break open a thick case.
"If seeds are planted too deeply again, a tremendous piece of work is imposed upon the little plant. To push up through, say one inch of soil, would be quite a task for a lettuce seedling.
"Finally in seed planting, the soil must be safely compacted or pressed about the seed. The object of this is to bring in contact with all parts of the seed soil particles with their films of water. Suppose a radish seed is planted and no soil happens to come in direct contact with the seed. That distance, so slight to us, is a well-nigh impossible one for the rootlets to extend to.
"There is a possibility of course, of too close compacting. This occurs when the soil is very wet. Do not compact at all then. In fact, such soil condition represents a very bad time for planting, anyway. Moisture is necessary for germination, but superabundance of water is fatal. It is simply ideal when after a planting a gentle rain comes—germination.
"I remember once seeing a garden which school children had planted so close to the surface that after a rain most of the seeds were lying all sprouted on the surface of the soil. Take care not to plant in such a manner.
"This talk has been largely for the purpose of bringing to your minds certain necessary points. Let me sum them up: Cheap seed are expensive because they are often full of impurities and lack vital power. Buy good seed and testthem. Plant large seed, because the storage of food is greater. Make the soil conditions right in order to give every help to the seed. Plant neither too deep, nor too near the surface. Compact the soil, and so aid germination. The first start of work must be right; otherwise, trouble comes."
"To think of a plant as a breathing, growing thing is wonderful, but it is far more wonderful to think of it as something possible for even boys and girls to train and improve. Here is a bed of petunias, let us say; do you know just how it is possible to have larger, finer petunias next year?
"A slight operation performed, and behold magic has been worked!
"First, we will go over the life history of a plant, and then I'll tell you of this magic and how to work it. Or better yet my assistants here, Josephine, Miriam and Ethel, will do the trick.
"A plant really goes through much the same operations in life as does an animal. Only to be sure, these operations are performed in a rather different way. A plant has a digestive, or feeding, system, a breathing apparatus, the power to rid itself of waste and to make seed; it moves, and it grows, too. Philip looked a bit skeptical when I said it moves. Well, it does. Of course, a plant does not walk about, and move from spot to spot. But a plant can and does move. Why it can turn itself around back to, even. Just look at my geranium slips there! they seem to be breaking their backs to peep out of the window and look at their best friend, the sun. Turn all of them around, George. See, they face us now! remember to look at them next Friday.
"But to start over again. A plant has just three necessary and important parts: these parts are the roots, stem, and leaves. No, Elizabeth, the fruit and flowers are not separate parts. Why? Well, merely because by some queer provision of the plant world, the leaves are responsible for making or forming both the flower and the fruit. If you watch a bud form and unfold, you will notice that the entire little bud seems to be a series of leaves. And if your fingers were clever enough you could take tiny leaves and fold them into the parts which go to make up the flower and the fruit. This last, like most of the rest of that I am telling you, is just one of the miracles of nature.
"The root, rootlets and root hairs all go to make up the root-system of a plant. This system is a feeding and food storage system; cold storage, we might call it.
"I have spoken before about how the root hairs absorb food. Food is soaked up something as a blotter soaks up ink. Underground plant food must be liquid in nature. This is because plants, like babies, must have very dilute food. Plants can no more get food out of a dry lump of soil than a little baby can get its food from a hunk of bread or a thick slice of corn beef. But let that soil be water-soaked, and have the proper bacteria at work, and the material is in plant-food form. Josephine has here an old, old experiment. What was a white pink is now a red one. It has been in that glass of red ink and a little water. And lo, up the stem the red fluid climbed until it suffused the white flower and made it red. Notice as Miriam holds that lump of sugar only just touching the surface of the water, the water moves up that lump. In this way water and liquid food rise up the stems of plants. Just so, too, water rises in the soil from the lower layers up to the feeding place of the roots, and even up to the surface of the ground.
"As the roots are feeding and storing places, so the stem is a sort of passage way for the passing back and forth of liquids. Take a stem of a big plant, like an oak tree, and you see in the wood where storage of fibre has gone on. But the great work is that of interchange.
"Leaves are very active portions of the plant. They represent a great, busy manufactory. Manufacturing what? That question I see stamped on Myron's face so plainly he need not speak it out. Manufacturing real food out of raw material—that is the work of these plant shops.
"Let me tell you about this. Ethel has in her hands two little plants. The one in her right hand has been growing in the light; the other, in her left hand, has been put away in the dark to grow. The absence of green colour is very marked in this latter plant. So you see it takes light to form this green, or chlorophyll as it is called. The chlorophyll-saturated cells, absorbing carbonic acid and the water-diluted food from the soil, literally break them up. And when broken, food is found suitable for plants to absorb. Wonderful, is it not?
"I spoke of carbonic acid; well, this is a gas, as some of you have found out before, made up of carbon and oxygen. It is a gas which we of the animal kingdom breathe out as waste from our bodies. The plant takes it in through the leaf—and, by the way, I ought to explain that. It is this way: if we had a magnifying glass we should find over the inner surface of leaves, pores, or stomata as they are called. They open in the presence of light; and from these openings what the plant has no use for passes out, and gases from the air may pass in. Some call these openings breathing pores.
"Quantities of water pass out through these pores. When this process goes on too rapidly a plant will wilt.
"So, to go back, we will suppose that carbonic acid gas has passed into the leaves. Straightway the chlorophyll bodies get to work. The gas is broken up, and oxygen and carbon are left. The carbon is wood the plant builds. Some of the oxygen passes out into the air and some is kept for plant food use.
"It is a good thing for us that some of the oxygen does escape into the air for we need it. So you see we, in our respiration, and the plant, in its breathing, are doing each other a good turn.
"Of course, there is the dilute food from the soil, which is largely mineral matter and water. The chlorophyll bodies work away on these minerals, and make them into foods. A great body of water, as I have said before, passes out of the plant through the stomata.
"I have told you a thing that the plant can do which we are not capable of doing. A plant takes a mineral and makes it over into food. You and I, unless we happen to be circus glass-eaters, are not built to do this work. But the vegetables which we eat do the work for us.
"A great deal of plant food is in the form of sugars and starches. I remember Katharine and Peter told me last winter that in their physiology they learned how sugars and starches were made in our own bodies. And lo and behold, the geranium can do a similar thing.
"Some plants store up lots of starch, as the potato. Others store quantities of sugar, as the Southern sugar cane and the beet. Wonderful? Well, I guess it is. If we could hear and see all the work these energetic little chlorophyll bodies are doing, we should be amazed.
"You will remember that I told you some plants could take the very necessary chemical nitrogen from the air; most of them, however, must get it from the soil. And so again this from the soil solution is worked over into available food.
"After all we must not fail to see that water is most important. It floats all the important food elements to the leaves for the work to be done there. The food carbon, of course, is an exception to this rule and I will say again in certain cases nitrogen is, also.
"Thus you boys and girls now understand how necessary it is that a soil should be of the right texture to hold water. If it is not, it must be helped to be so. Sand, you will remember, had to be doctored to hold water. Clay needed treatment in order to make it quit its bad habit of baking out.
"Here is a rather interesting experiment set up by Josephine and Ethel. Look at the first piece of apparatus—a tumbler partly full of water, a piece of cardboard over the top of the tumbler, and passing down through a hole in the cardboard a piece of plant just stem stripped of leaves, and finally a second tumbler clapped over the first. The second piece of apparatus is exactly like the first, only that the stem, one end of which is in the water, has leaves on the other end. Notice that the upper glass in the second case has moisture on it. The upper tumbler of the other set is perfectly dry. Whence, then, came the moisture? It must, of course, be the leaves which gave it off, since they represent the only difference in the two pieces of apparatus.
"I wish we might go on with whole sets of experiments, but for that we have not time.
"You understand a little of the mission of root, stem and leaf. The root does a good work in holding a plant in place. It is the foundation material of the plant. There is much, much more to be learned about all these subjects. This little is just to open your eyes to the wonders of the work each plant is performing all the time.
"I said I would show you some magic. Well, this magic has to do with plant improvement. It is not much of a trick to raise a plant, but it is a great one to be able to improve that plant.
"Let me tell you of a friend of mine whom we will call Rodney, because that is his real name. One day Rodney noticed the gardener doing something with a little flat knife to a pansy. Then he tied a little paper bag over the pansy, of course leaving the whole thing on the plant.
"'What are you doing?' asked the lad. 'I am fixing that pansy so that the seed from it shall be finer seed than they otherwise would be.'
"Then the old gardener explained this to Rodney: There are two parts to flowers which are very necessary, absolutely necessary to making seed. One part is the pistil, the other the stamen. Some flowers have both pistils and stamen, while others have just the pistil and one has to hunt for another plant having the stamen. You can tell the stamens in this way: they are the parts which have in their care the pollen. Most of you know pollen as a yellow powder or dust. Sometimes it is a sticky gummy mass. The pistil is that part of the flower which ends in the seed vessel. It very often takes a central position in the flower, standing up importantly as if it were the 'part' of the flower. And after all, it is. Now, when this pollen powder falls on the pistil it does not explode. The pistil merely opens up a bit and down travels the powder into the seed vessel to help form seed. There would be no real fertile seed without the pollen.
"Sometimes the pollen from one flower falls on its own pistil, sometimes the wind, the bees, the birds carry the pollen to flowers far off and drop it on their pistils. Marvelous, is it not? Everything has to be just right, or the pollen does not do its work nor the pistil, either. Pollen has to be ripe to help make the seed.
"But how can the work of the wind and the bees and the birds be improved on? Just as the old gardener was doing it. He had one pansy, oh such a large one, but not at all beautiful in colour. He had another one, small but exquisite in colouring. If he could but grow those two together, shake them up, say a magic word and get a pansy both beautiful and large!
"Rodney's gardener used magic but not a magic wand. He took a little knife called a scalpel. He carefully took some pollen from the beautiful pansy and then rubbed it gently over the pistil of the big pansy. The pollen was all ready to drop, and by this he knew it was ripe.
"Why did he place a bag over the pansy? Well, simply because he didn't wish that pansy interfered with. Suppose the bag were not on; suppose after he had put the pollen on, the wind had blown other pollen to this same pistil? Let us suppose that this other pollen came from a very inferior flower. The experiment would have been spoiled.
"Any of you can try this plant improvement. I see by Katharine's eyes and Dee's also that they are going to try it. It is well if you have a pair of forceps. Then you need not use your fingers against the plant at all. Gently pull the pistil a bit forward, gently place the pollen on with the scalpel and you have performed the operation entirely with the proper instruments.
"The girls did some saving of fine specimens of flowers this fall, but the kind of work of which I have just told you means far more. In the one case you choose from what you have; in the other case you make what you want.
"Good-by, again, until next Friday afternoon!"