70 | ANNUAL REPORT. 
Clean well with a fanning mill and hand Pick. The green or 
should be harvested before perfectly ripe in order to preserve their fine 
color. >* 
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Tomato seed, when conscientiously saved for sale, is taken only from per we 
call first pickings. The first to ripen, as well as the largest and finest shaped 
fruit, is always formed low down on the stem and is the only fruit that mies 
gathered for seed purposes. 
In curing the seed the ripe tomatoes are passed through a mill much like the 
old-fashioned cylinder apple grinder, only the teeth on the cylinder are about 
three inches long. 
After grinding they are placed in a barrel and allowed to ferment, and are 
washed and dried same as cucumber or squash. 
Turnip. 
With a short chapter on turnip seed, I will finish the list. 
The fancy white turnip, and most of the Swede or Rutabaga seed is imported 
from Europe. The great labor required to handle the roots in storing and trans- 
planting in this country of high priced labor renders the business unprofitable, 
when grown in competition with equally as good stock grown in England and 
Germany. 
‘There is now being offered in this country a large stock of worthless American 
seed, that is offered at a price that will temporarily ruin the business of the dealer 
who offers good stock, and I am sorry to say it is being offered by dealers who 
ought to know better. The worn out cotton and tobacco fields of Virginia are 
being turned to advantage in this respect. 
feel is sown broadcast of the different varieties, and without any cultivation 
the crop is allowed to struggle for existence and shape. 
In that climate they can remain out all winter with safety, and are not hary- 
’ ested, but are allowed to remain just as they grew, and without any opportunity 
to weed out the worthless, and the whole mass is allowed to go to seed, until the 
field presents the appearance of a tangled growth of wild mustard. When ripe 
tis harvested with a reaper, and the whole operation has been attended with so 
little expense that the growers and dealers in this spurious article are able to 
undersell other dealers and reap a rich harvest besides. 
About two thousand bushels of this stuff were grown last year, and some of 
you who buy from commissioned boxes will have an opportunity to test it. 
Separation of Varieties. 
I will give you my plan for securing isolation in growing a general crop. Our 
fields are laid out in forty acre lots, 80 rods square. We have a notion that 
everything should be sowed north and south, and lay out our grounds accord- 
ingly. 
We will suppose we have eight sorts and wish to grow in an isolated position. 
Selecting a field that suits us, we begin, for illustration, on the west side and 
plant ten rods wide, or five acres of Early Maine Corn. 
