"Ahem, it's all seeds, I just showed it to the eldest lady, and you may not recognize it!"

Under Zhu Ying's blazing gaze, the old salted fish looked very happy, and directly untied a burden and handed it over, and said with a smile: "Look, this is what I have nothing to do!" Hey, I used to drift on the sea, and I didn't have any other hobbies, so I often brought some messy things back, and I thought it was delicious, and I didn't know what kind of thing I planted. ”

"As the days went by, I tossed a big vegetable garden, and there were so many things that I didn't even know what they were. Talking about the secret garden, in fact, it's just like what the second son said, it's just a good picture. But since I'm old and don't go to sea much, I only have such a little hobby left, so I hide it and don't want outsiders to know, I really didn't play tricks on the second son before. ”

"Moreover, I did not trust the wrong man, and took him to one of my vegetable gardens, but the boy was not a thing, and actually stole the vegetables to sell, and I went to inquire and was cross-examined, so hated that I bulldozed all the vegetable gardens and moved them to another place. Over the years, not to mention the little peanut, even Yunhe, I have never been to my new vegetable garden, and the second son is still the first outsider. ”

Zhu Er snorted when he heard this: "According to what you say, if you take me there, then you can still afford me?" Don't look at who I am, can I look at your garden full of things that can only be eaten? ”

But he suddenly saw Zhang Shou on the other side glaring at him, and suddenly came to his senses, and quickly changed his words: "I listened to what Ah Liu said after returning from Cangzhou, in order to visit those seeds with high quality and good yield, but I don't want money, I don't want to have a future, I just want to do something solid." Besides, don't you have to take out all your skills when you get to the capital? ”

Not necessarily! If you go to the capital, you find that the emperor Lao'er is a faint monarch who eats, drinks and has fun all day long and ignores state affairs, or is he a mediocre lord who is played with by the courtiers in the palm of his hand, but he is trapped in the court, or he looks like an iron fist, but in fact likes to play with people's hearts...... He'd rather pretend to be incompetent, pat his ass and leave!

The old salted fish thought about it, but at the same time, he handed one of the burdens to Zhu Ying very attentively. Seeing that Zhu Ying really untied the burden, and saw the paper bags inside, he let Zhu Er hold the baggage, opened the bag himself, and inspected the contents with great interest, he glanced at Zhang Shou, and handed over another burden, and then smiled so much that the wrinkles on his face were stretched.

"Dr. Zhang, you are both Dr. Guozi, and you have a university question, as far as the ingredients before me, you actually know how to make the best use of them, so please give these seeds now, please give them a palm? To be honest, there are some things I don't really recognize. ”

Zhang Shou learned that Xian Yunhe had never entered the vegetable garden of the old salted fish, and he had already realized that the vegetable garden was indeed the biggest secret of the old salted fish - on the contrary, the steles that Ah Liu had carried in just now were probably insignificant in the eyes of the old salted fish - he didn't recognize them anyway. At this time, he did not take the burden, but directly untied it in the hands of the old salted fish and took out a paper bag from it.

Zhu Er couldn't help but feel a little angry when he saw that he was being treated as a bag by Zhu Ying, and complained in his mouth: "Yingying, you haven't even planted flowers, let alone these seeds, how can you recognize them?" I've seen it in the garden before, and I haven't seen more than half of it, so I don't recognize it. Don't look at your brother-in-law, he's learned, he certainly doesn't know what it is! ”

As he spoke, Zhu Er looked at Zhang Shou, and saw that someone was pulling out a black seed with white hair from a paper bag, and he was looking at it thoughtfully, and he was suddenly a little unsure.

Zhang Shou grew up in the countryside after all, it will never be true...... Have you planted the land?

Sure enough, the next moment, Zhu Ying didn't look at him angrily: "When I first met Ah Shou, he was leading people to talk to people about the harvest in the paddy field!" Even if I don't know these seeds, he must know them! ”

The old salted fish kept pricking up his ears to listen to everyone's every word, and when he heard that Zhang Shou had actually gone to the ground, he hurriedly smiled and said, "I don't believe what the eldest lady said...... Looking at Dr. Zhang's character, like this, even if he was born in a small family, he must be held in the palm of his hand as a treasure, how can he be willing to go to the ground? ”

"I didn't say he worked in the field himself!" Zhu Ying raised her eyebrows slightly and smiled slyly, "I mean, Ah Shou just knows a little about farming." ”

She deliberately accentuated the tone of her understanding of two words, and then said unhurriedly: "The reason why he talked about a good harvest with people in the paddy field was because he persuaded the people in the village to open a canal to divert water into the field and change the wheat field into a rice field." Nowadays, there are many people in the south of the capital, and the perennial wheat and grain in the capital are expensive, coupled with the silkworm harvesting and weaving silk, the income of each household in his village is much more. ”

The old salted fish couldn't help but glance sideways at Zhang Shou again, and seeing that people were still turning over and over to see the black seed, he asked tentatively, "Does Dr. Zhang know what this is?" ”

"If I didn't even know this, wouldn't I be laughed at by you?" Zhang Shou smiled, then looked at the old salted fish calmly and said, "Isn't this a cotton seed?" Could it be that you also brought it from overseas? ”

Zhu Ying was okay, but Zhu Er suddenly burst into a rage: "Okay, you old salted fish, you actually tricked me?" This is nothing more than cotton seeds, you lie to me and say what you brought from overseas! ”

The old salted fish was not in a hurry, and squinted at Zhu Er with contempt: "Cotton was not produced in our country in the first place, it was originally brought in from the west, and the second son called himself a good farmer, so he didn't even know this?" ”

Zhu Er was suddenly like a ball that was full of breath but was suddenly poked into a hole, and he was completely deflated all of a sudden.

Seeing that his face was full of emptiness, Zhang Shou interrupted and said, "Okay, you don't have to talk outside all the time, let's go into the house." As for this cotton seed, as the old salted fish said, in fact, our country did not plant in the past, and even if it is planted now, the variety is not good, if there are overseas excellent seeds, it is really successful, it can be said that it is a more important achievement than the new textile machine and the new loom. ”

Seeing that Zhang Shou said this, he took the cottonseed and went back to the house thoughtfully, Zhu Er saw that Zhu Ying hurriedly wrapped the kind of seed in his hand, stuffed it into his arms and knotted the burden again, and then hurried forward to chase Zhang Shou, he thought about the words that he must have been identified as ignorant just now, and his heart suddenly felt bad.

The eldest brother is both civil and military, and his brother-in-law is also proficient in arithmetic, and he can still "understand" farming, he really can't live!

The old salted fish put away the burden in his hand, and then reached out again and easily carried the other one from Zhu Er, and then said to Zhu Er meaningfully: "Second son, if you are really good at farming, you have to learn a lot from your teacher and future brother-in-law, otherwise you won't even know a cotton seed, and it will be a joke to say it!" ”

"Humph!" There was a cold snort in his mouth, but Zhu Er knew that people were right, and when he followed into the courtyard, he said stupidly, "My family is noble, and if you have no talent in martial arts, you will be escorted to study, even if there is a farm at home, it will not be my turn to go, and I didn't grow up in a small village, how can I recognize these things?" ”

Speaking of this, he felt that this seemed to be a satire on Zhang Shou's background, so he hurriedly forcibly diverted the topic: "Then again, since you said that the cotton seeds were obtained from overseas, then I want to ask you, how does the cotton compare with ours after planting?" Is it high yield, or good quality? ”

The old salted fish who walked in front smiled, but did not answer immediately.

It wasn't until he entered the house that Ah Liu had placed the pieces of steles neatly on the central table, and the little peanut was looking at it curiously, so he said: "This cotton was planted by the locals when I was overseas, and it is better than ours in terms of yield, wool length, or toughness." ”

Zhang Shou was still looking at the cottonseed in his hand, and after a while, he looked up at the old salted fish, and said with a smile: "However, after you take it back and try it, you should find that the effect is average, far less good than what you saw overseas, isn't it?" ”

Old Salty Fish didn't expect Zhang Shou to judge so accurately, and after being stunned for a moment, he just didn't see Zhu Er's schadenfreude, and nodded curtly.

"Definitely. I've brought it back several times, and I've asked someone else to bring it back a few times, but the results are not very good, far inferior to those tomatoes and peanuts and the like. ”

But he also confessed, and simply counted his failures again and again: "Once it was because the ship had been drifting at sea for too long, and when I finally arrived in Cangzhou, I had missed the sowing date, and when I planted it, the cottonseed did not move at all." ”

"Once, it was planted too densely, and many cotton peaches could not be opened, so the yield was scarce, and the cotton peaches produced were small and light. I pondered, I guess it was because of the lack of sunshine. ”

"Once I finally planted cotton, the harvest was okay, and after I asked someone to gin, I found that the cotton wool was thin, long and tough, and it was indeed a good thing, stronger than our current one. I wondered if I could mix crops, so I took a batch of seeds from the best growing cotton fields in Cangzhou, and the result was that the more I planted, the worse it became...... Alas, I'm really. ”

The old salted fish did not hesitate to carefully explain his failures again and again, and when he saw that Zhang Shou listened attentively, he smiled bitterly: "I can't be angry either." Things like tomatoes, sweet potatoes, peanuts, etc., even if the initial taste is different, can be grown for three or five years, and in the end it will be almost the same, only this cotton, I can't remember how many times I have broken the halberd. ”

This time, Zhu Er was in no mood to mock the old salted fish, he asked himself, if it were himself, could he be so persistent just to grow good cotton? Even Zhu Ying couldn't help but say, "I didn't expect you to have such patience." ”

Zhang Shou is angry and funny. You know, when the mainland cotton in later generations - most of the people called it American cotton - was introduced into China, it is said that the time span was as long as several decades, and at first it was simply the government desperately promoting, but the people were mourning all over the wilderness, not only did not bear fruit, but also often harvested less or even no harvest, and even worked hard to plant, the so-called foreign cotton is not as good as Chinese cotton.

At that time, from the government to businessmen to the people, I don't know how many people put into it, it was a large-scale trial planting all over the country, often ten tons of seeds, and Lao Xianyu really relied on one person to promote such a great cause?

Since Lao Xianyu said before, he had people bring him seeds from overseas several times later, and it was obvious that there were people who had traveled across the ocean all the year round as helpers, so, then, someone's vegetable garden was really just taken care of by himself, and there were no outsiders?

But there is such a thing as farming, and daughters and sons like Zhu Ying and Zhu Er don't know, but he knows.

Even if it's just for a day or two, watering and fertilizing, weeds and bugs alone can make a mess of the garden! Especially for things like cotton, which are susceptible to pests and diseases, overgrown weeds can easily attract all kinds of insects, and no one can serve them at all!

Zhang Shouzheng was thinking so, only to see the old salted fish suddenly look at him, he calmly looked at the person, until the person avoided his gaze very unnaturally, he knew that the old man was still weak in the end.

At that moment, he didn't expose this trick of people, and said with a smile: "How many cottonseeds do you have on hand?" It can't be the pack I just saw, right? ”

Seeing that the old salted fish hesitated and didn't speak, he said to himself: "As far as I know, this kind of plant from overseas, not to mention the tomatoes that we have never had here, and those with local varieties like cotton, once the overseas varieties and local varieties are mixed at will, no matter how good the foreign varieties are, the results of planting together are often very bad." Where did you hear about hybrids? ”

Although I don't know where Zhang Shou knew this, the old salted fish still said in a hurry: "I heard that mixing different varieties together and pounding them during pollination may be able to breed better seeds...... This seems to be called hybridization? ”

Zhang Shou almost spurted out a mouthful of old blood. At this time, he no longer had the slightest doubt, he was used to using such a term in this era, but he was not a traverser - then, the old salted fish must have obtained some relics of Emperor Taizu back then. Whether it's information, connections, or something else, in short, this is definitely a person who can't be let go!

Of course, now I don't know whether it is a variety of island cotton or land cotton, the old salted fish should be introduced into the local trial and not long after, if it is really tried for many years and this result, then they really want to bow a tear of sympathy for their failure.

In a document he occasionally read in his previous life, he talked about the degradation of American cotton, claiming that until the middle of the twentieth century, when excellent varieties were introduced and even cultivated in China, degradation was still a big problem, and now in this year, it is not first guaranteed that it is always self-bred, so as to maintain the purity of the seeds, avoid degradation, and use them to cross with those Asian cotton varieties that are far inferior...... Is this funny?

To hybridize, it must at least be a cross between different upland cotton species...... In other words, this is really a group of veterans of farming?

So, he had to say earnestly: "Orange is orange in Huainan, and orange is orange in Huaibei." This is actually the same when applied to cotton. Just as the same category is not matched, the category of overseas cotton is actually different from the category of cotton in China. Even if you want to crossbreed, you have to bring back different overseas cotton and breed the seeds, and then try to cross each other. ”

"Otherwise, then the mule after crossing with a horse and a donkey will not be able to bear children, that's a truth."

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