for your good money is good seed, not cheap ink. Second, buy of
seedsmen who make a point of growing and testing their own seed. Third,
to begin with, buy from several houses and weed out to the one which
proves, by actual results, to be the most reliable. Another good plan
is to purchase seed of any particular variety from the firm that makes
a leading specialty of it; in many cases these specialties have been
introduced by these firms and they grow their own supplies of these
seeds; they will also be surer of being true to name and type.

Good plants are, in proportion to the amounts used, just as important
as good seed--and of course you cannot afford losing weeks of garden
usefulness by growing entirely from seed sown out-doors. Beets,
cabbage, cauliflower, lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, egg-plant, and for
really efficient gardening, also onions, corn, melons, celery, lima
beans, cucumbers, and squash, will all begin their joyous journey
toward the gardener's table several weeks before they get into the
garden at all. They will all be started under glass and have attained a
good, thrifty, growing size before they are placed in the soil we have
been so carefully preparing for them. It is next to impossible to
describe a "good" vegetable plant, but he who gardens will come soon to
distinguish between the healthy, short-jointed, deep-colored plant
which is ready to take hold and grow, and the soft, flabby (or too
succulent) drawn-up growth of plants which have been too much pampered,
or dwarfed, weazened specimens which have been abused and starved; he
will learn that a dozen of the former will yield more than fifty of the
latter. Plants may be bought of the florist or market gardener. If so,
they should be personally selected, some time ahead, and gotten some
few days before needed for setting out, so that you may be sure to have
them properly "hardened off," and in the right degree of moisture, for
transplanting, as will be described later.