No. 7. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 615 



the tomato. We may not need new varieties but we do need better 

 strains of the best varieties now grown. Have yon ever kept a 

 careful record of the yield of a number of plants of a variety grown 

 under similar conditions? If not try it and see for yourself what a 

 variation not only in total yield but in time of ripening these plants 

 show. Some plants will ripen all or a large part of the fruit at 

 one time and early in the season while others will ripen the bulk of 

 their fruit late in the season or a little at each picking throughout 

 the season. Some j)lants will produce two or three times as much 

 as other plants adjacent to them. Is this all due to variation in 

 environment? IMueli of it may be due to soil variation but I am 

 confident that some of it is due to what we call inherent tendencies 

 or the power of the plant to reproduce itself without respect to its 

 surroundings. When we save seed from a fine tomato which has 

 been selected from a basket of fruit we may be getting just the kind 

 of seed we do not want. We often find the finest specimens of fruit 

 on vines which have very few fruits on and are therefore not pro- 

 ductive. When we select specimens to save for seed from a basket 

 we know nothing of the character of the plant from which they 

 come. It is very important therefore that we take into considera- 

 tion the entire plant when making selections for seed or our work 

 will be useless. If we expect to do thorough work in the way of 

 improving the tomato by selection we should save seeds from a few 

 specimens of several apparently productive and otherwise satisfac- 

 tory- plants and test them out' for seevral seasons much after the plan 

 followed by the corn breeders in their ear-to-row work. The fact 

 that tomatoes can be propagated from cuttings and thereby kept pure 

 should be of great help in this work. 



"^'^liere a strictly early variety is wanted it is doubtful if there 

 is anything superior to the best strains of Farliana. For medium 

 early the Beauty is a first-class purple sort and Chalk's Early Jewel 

 a good red tomato. 



We grow the i)lants of the early varieties in much the same way 

 as we do the late sorts except that the seed is sown two or three 

 weeks earlier. In transplanting the second time the plants are set in 

 four instead of two-inch pots. This enables them to grow to a 

 larger size without becoming pot-bound. The plants are removed 

 from the pots at the greenhouse when we are ready to plant them 

 and hauled to the field in flats made from glass boxes. 



The last two or three seasons we have had long spells of cold 

 wet weather after some of our early plants were set in the field. 

 The plants set after the cold spell have always done better than 

 those set before. From this experience I have come to the conclu- 

 sion that it is not always advisable to be in too much of a hurry 

 to get the plants in the field. 



With us there is not as much staking of tomatoes as was prac- 

 ticed a few years ago. The scarcity of help recently has no doubt 

 had some influence along this line. Where it is not necessary to 

 economize space mulching with straw will answer much the same 

 purpose as staking. The mulch will keep the fruit clean and at the 

 same time conserve the moisture. One of the drawbacks to the use 

 of mulch is that it affords a hiding place for crickets and other in- 

 sects which perforate the skin of the tomatoes and render them un- 

 saleable. 



