270 Report oh the Horticulturist. 



It is not to be expected, however, that single-stem plants will 

 outyield three-stem plants in every instance regardless of the 

 influences which surround them. Various things influence the 

 productiveness of tomato plants and the skillful gardener studies 

 to combine all these influences to the end that he may get a large 

 yield of fruit of marketable size. In the hands of a skillful 

 gardener plants trained to three stems may do better than the 

 same plants trained to single stems would do in the hands of 

 an unskillful man. In other words, the advantage gained by 

 training tomatoes to single stems in the forcing house are not 

 great enough to overcome the results of neglect or lack of skill. 



We are confident that, other things being equal, the difi'erent 

 methods under consideration will give results in accordance with 

 the conclusions which are given below. 



Single-Stem vs. Three-Stem Training. 



The single-stem training is clearly superior to three-stem train- 

 ing for winter forcing of tomatoes in this climate, both in the 

 amount of fruit ripened early in the season and in the yield on 

 equal areas. There is but slight difference' in the average size 

 of fruit produced but on the whole the fruit on single-stem plants 

 seems to average slightly larger than that on three-stem plants. 



Plants Benched in Pots vs. Plants Benched not in Pots. 



Plants kept in small pots and jjlunged in soil on the bench 

 as compared with similar plants taken from the pots and trans- 

 planted to the bench sometimes show slightly more satisfactory 

 results when the plants are trained to single-stem. When the 

 plants are trained to three-stems, keeping them in small pots as 

 just described seems to be a disadvantage. 



