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impossible to pick out the plants which bore such blossoms by 

 any comparison of fruit later in the season. 



7. Notes of yields. The season has a profound influence upon 

 tomato yields. If the weather is cool and dark in early Septem- 

 ber, when the main pickings are coming on, the crop will likely 

 fall below the profitable limit, and if frost should come early, half 

 the crop may be lost in this State. This unpropitious weather of 

 early fall usually brings on the rot, causing additional loss. 

 The chief object of forcing the plants in spring is to escape 

 these calamities to a great extent by inducing the plants to bear 

 early. These calamities overtook our crop this year, so that our 

 3deld of marketable' fruit is small. The plants set full, and at the 

 first killing frost, Sept. 24th, fully half the crop was immature. 

 Our plants were started late to avoid all labor possible in the 

 handling of a large test plantation, and as our results were to be 

 comparative only, no loss followed. But every year's experience 

 strengthens the conviction that in the North tomato plants should 

 be started early and forced rapidly. The results from early and 

 late settings on a previous page point in the same direction. In 

 our short seasons it is difficult to secure the large yields of the 

 Middle States. The same operations of forcing are probably not 

 equally valuable in Maryland and New York. A trip through 

 Delaware and Maryland this fall brought to mind the differences 

 in yields between the Middle and Northern States in a most forci- 

 ble manner. The plantation in the Cornell gardens had been 

 killed by frost and half the tomatoes were still immature. The 

 southern plantations were still green and scarcely any fruit re- 

 mained on them. Frost was unusually late in Delaware and 

 Maryland this year, perhaps, but the observation was inevitable 

 that growers there with little effort harvest a crop which, in ordi- 

 nary years, we can obtain only under the most forceful culture. 



Yet our yields are not so small as they have been represented 

 to be. Even in this very poor year, the average yield per plant 

 of marketable tomatoes, before frost, from our common garden 

 plantation was 11.3 lbs. If plants are set 4x4 ft. apart, this 

 means over 15 tons per acre. The yields in the New Jersey, 

 Delaware and Maryland fields, even with the longer seasons, by 

 which two or three pickings are gained, are from 8 to 16 tons. 

 Last year our common plantation yielded an average of 12.5 lbs. 

 per plant of marketable fruit, before frost. We have never seen 



