The Seasons of the Garden
Special yield-boosting crop treatments, also includes research briefs and gleanings.
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STAFF PHOTO
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by Greg and Pat Williams
SPECIAL YIELD-BOOSTING TREATMENTS
Recently, we've collected quite a few ideas concerning
doing "strange" things to vegetable seeds and seedlings to
try to increase yields. All of these suggestions are based
on research reports from professional
horticulturists—but that's no guarantee that they'll
work for you. In fact, we're hoping that readers of THE
MOTHER EARTH NEWS will experiment with these techniques and
let us know their results! (Just remember to grow a few
untreated "control" plants to compare to your experimental
ones.)
Russian scientists have seen yield increases of up to 88%
after soaking the seeds of some tomato varieties in a
6.5°10 solution of skimmed milk . Another
tomato seed treatment (reported by Egyptian researchers)
for boosting yields is to heat air-dried seeds for two
hours at 140° F: Apparently, the heat changes the
proportions of natural growth regulators in the plants.
A Netherlands experimenter has found that thinning peppers
to leave only a few fruits at the initial fruit-setting
stage increases yields and average fruit size. Canadian
researchers reported large yield increases for cowpeas that
were "beheaded" between the fourth and fifth leaves on the
main stem when the fifth leaf reached full size. The
decapitation also made the plants more compact. (Might this
technique work with soybeans or green beans?) Similarly,
Cornell University horticulturists found that removing the
growing tip from a tomato plant when it has four or five
leaves delays first flowering two to five days, but then
creates simultaneous flowering of several branch clusters
and hence higher "second-earliest" yields.