Show i 1 GROWING TOMATOES FOR THE MARKET Next to the Potato It Stands nt head of Garden Vegetables mIn m-in Commercial Importance In a recent bulletin of the West Virginia Vir-ginia station W M Munson says Next to the potato the tomato stands perhaps at the head of tho list of garden vegetables In commercial commer-cial Importance In Maryland Now Jersey Delaware Ohla Indiana and to a rapidly increasing extent in West Virginia tho crop la of special importance impor-tance whllo tho greenhouses of New York and New England and tho newly I developed truck fields of Florida endeavor en-deavor to supply the demand for this fruit In winter Uy far the larger portion of the area devoted to this crop Is employed In supplying fruit for the canning factories fac-tories and It Is the demand of tho canneries which more than any other has given the great Impetus to tomato culture Tho opinion is expressed that as a simple business proposition however 1 ti SingleStem Plant In Forcing House Showing Method of Tying Fruit Cluster tomato growing offers excellent opportunities oppor-tunities at this time Prof Munson summarizes his 20 years experience In the culture of tomatoes to-matoes In the field and In the greenhouse green-house substantially as follows Field Culture One of the most Important Im-portant problems in tomato culture is that of earliness As a rule plants purchased of the local dealers are drawn and leggy being crowded together to-gether In small boxes When set In the field where too often the soil Is hard and dry the shock Is such that several weeks are required for the I plants to recover and no fruit sets until un-til lato In Ute season In general J these weak drawn plant are not worth setting Frequent transplanting before setting set-ting in the field Is the best method of i securing strong stocky welldeveloped plants The practice usually followed by the wilier has been to now thb seeds in hotbeds or In shallow boxes In the greenhouses about April 1 When the first true leaves havo well started or as soon as the plants begin to crowd transfer to twoInch pots mil later to threeInch and fourinch If occasion demand As a rule however how-ever In this climate it will bo unnecessary I unneces-sary to handle the plants more than 8 twice In the absence of pots the plants may bo handled In boxes or even In the bed but potgrown plants tare t-are always picferablc as they are checked less by removal to the Held In the field the plants are set about I four by five feet Many would plant t closer but on reasonably rich ground the plants will cover tho whole surface I 1 4 sur-face If set at this distance 4 The plants E lion Id bo set in the 1 field as soon as danger from frost Is nt past It has commonly been taught f that any chill Is nearly fatal to young I + tomato plants but as shown by tho jt j writers work at Cornell university I and at the Maine experiment station i u chill is not as fatal to success ns is commonly supposed At the Maino j station It was found that In every instance In-stance save one the first ripe fruits were obtained from plants sot latest This fact however is not necessarily J an Indication of earliness as the Into sot plants were older than Is usually I desirable for setting and the first i h fruits In from blos were some cases I t Roms formed while in the house After these had ripened there was along a-long Interval before others followed LJ Without exception the average number d num-ber of fruits and the average weight l of the product per plant was In direct ratio with the earliness of setting As stated in bulletin 116 of tho West i Virginia station l The notion that tomatoes do better upon relatively poor soil Is erroneous Whllo it Is doubtful if inn excessively 1 r heavy application of stable manure r would be profitable a liberal appllca tlon such > as would bo given for a good crop of corn may nearly always bo used with advantage At the Cor t null experiment station It was found that the results obtained with liberal 1 manuring under commercial conditions 1 condi-tions certainly show that good stable manure in abundance could bo used profitably Some of tho best tomato soils arc the newly cleared areas designed for orchard planting Hit on these same new soils an application of about 600 pounds of a good lmigh grade complete J fertilizer will usually be found advan lageous Trimming 0 tho vines In midsummer as a means of hastening maturity and Increasing the yield of fruit is frequently fre-quently recommended but very seldom practiced even by amateurs in the writers experience tho results obtained ob-tained justify greater emphasis of this point As a result of two successive seasons work at tho Maine experiment station it was found that the total increase in-crease In the number of fruits matured ma-tured duo to trimming ranged from 55 per cent to 50 per cent The percentage per-centage gain by weight was very marked and In ono Instance reached I a total of 58 per cent In these trials 5 the plants were grown under ordinary f field culture They were started in the greenhouse April 1 planted the field Juno 1 and headed back July 24 August Au-gust 8 and September 5 At each I trimming the leading I branches were shortened about six Inches and most of tho side shoots below the first clusters clus-ters of fruit were removed the others i being shortened The sunlight was thus freely admitted to tho fruit and 1 picking watt rendered much easier 1 |