The Chickasha Daily Express

How Money May Be Saved on Every Farm.

It is one of the pleasantest of "fall jobs" to gather and take care of garden and flower seeds, yet how often it is neglected till too late, and in the following spring money is paid out for varieties that often fall short of being as good as those which might have been saved!

October is the time for gathering seeds and mothers should not only attend to the work themselves, but they should get their children interested in it.

In the first place, have the girls make some neat little bags out of odd pieces of new calico, hemming them so that a string may be run through the hem. When they are finished small paper labels should be wet on one side with good thick boiled starch and then pressed onto the bag with a hot flatiron. Then a dozen or more of envelopes should be made out of stout wrapping paper, for the flower seeds. This part of getting ready, the boys can do nicely. The envelopes should be cut quite long and narrow with the opening left at one end.

When the bags and envelopes are ready, the seed should be gathered and made ready for drying. The seeds of tomatoes should be squeezed out onto a piece of thin cloth, which should then be gathered up and tied with a string, leaving the seeds in the middle. When this is done it will look like a "sugar-teat," and if you don't know what that looks like ask grandma and she can tell you. The cloth containing the seeds should be thrown into cold water and rubbed and squeezed in it for a few minutes, then squeezed as dry as possible. On opening the seeds will be found to be bright and clean and all ready to be dried.

Cucumber and muskmelon should not be gathered at the same time, and the labeling ought never to be neglected. They look so much alike. Pumpkins, squash, melons, cucumbers and citron seeds should invariably be washed before drying. Onions, beets, carrots, parsnip and flower seeds need no washing but ought to be well dried. Lettuce, radish, onion and many kinds of flower seeds have to be dried, rubbed or shelled and winnowed and no other time is right for this work except the fall. They will not keep well if left in the chaff or pods all winter.

Children should be encouraged to gather and save flower seeds. If a neighbor has flowers she will nearly always be willing to let them gather seeds from any of her plants, which they may not have. Don't put it off till spring and then let the children beg the seeds which she has saved for herself.

Remember that all seeds must be dry when picked, then scattered thinly on paper in a warm dry place. After about a week they can be put into the bags or envelopes and stored in some place where mice cannot get them.