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Show Growing Tomatoes. The middle of May finds most of the tomato plants In the garden. The-man The-man who was wise enough to grow his own plants in a hot bed will have-ripe have-ripe fruit quite a long while before his neighbor, who has to depend upon half-dried, discouraged seedlings from a department store. Still, by insisting upon getting the. best plants you can buy, big sturdy fellows, with lots of leaves and roots full of water, you can do very welt with purchased tomato plants. Do not secure them until you are ail ready to plant and get them in the ground as soon as possible. As usually handled, the amateur gardener gets a double crop of foliage and a half crop of ripe tomatoes. The fruit splits, rots at the ends and a large part of it fails to color up and ripen before frost catches it. The purpose of this article is to tell how to avoid these troubles and secure se-cure twice as much ripe, sound fruit with no more trouble. It is a simple-secret, simple-secret, but few seem to know it. Tomatoes need a rich, deep, rather heavy soil, well fertilized. Muriatft of potash is an excellent fertilizer, an is also steamed ground bene. Use a handful to each pint Spade and cultivate as for garden crop and drive in strong stakes about five feet long, placing them two feet by four feet. Set one plant four lnche3 from the south side of each stake, covering the roots firmly and soaking: the soil with water after setting. Allow only three branches to grow on each plant, and tie them to the stake with strips of cloth. When they reach the top of the stake, prune-them prune-them back. If a smaller quantity of the very finest and largest tomatoes are preferred, allow but one mala stem to develop. Keep the branch, ends clipped as soon as the plant has attained good size, and all of its energy en-ergy will then go into making tomatoes. toma-toes. Now comes the secret! Where a. side branch leaves the main stem is a fork in which the fruit develops. In same place little shoots appear. Pinch out these shoots as fast as they grow and you cannot fail to get magnificent tomatoes. Do not plant one of the-tree the-tree varieties, but select a smooth, even, meaty type like Matchless. Stone, and many others of their kind- |