CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

 TOMATOES. 



There is no vegetable crop grown that has so increased in popularity 

 in the past forty years as the tomato. The writer can remember when in the 

 markets in the city of Philadelphia but a few bushels could be sold on each 

 market day, and canning was then unknown and few people ate the fruit at 

 all. Now the use of the tomato has grown to enormous proportions, and 

 where fifty years ago a peck would supply a market stall, it would take many 

 bushels today. In many sections the crop has grown to the proportions of a 

 farm crop and extensive fields are planted for the supply of the canning es- 

 tablishments in all parts of the country. Starting in the winter in Cuba and 

 South Florida, the tomato is a staple for the market gardener all up the 

 coast to the most northern point where they can be ripened in the open air. 

 And not only in the open air is the crop grown, but acres and acres of glass 

 are devoted to the forcing of the crop in winter, when the superior quality 

 of the forced fruit finds it a ready sale at prices far above that of the inferior 

 product of Cuba and Florida. There is probably more capital invested in the 

 cultivation of the tomato in the open ground and under glass than any other 

 garden crop. Hence the varying conditions under which the crop is produced 

 should have careful attention. From the tender nature of the plant and its 

 tropical origin it might be supposed that it would be more successfully grown 

 in the South than North; but, in fact, the reverse is true. The crop in the 

 South is never so large per acre as in the Middle and Northern States. The 

 plants are there subject to disease to a greater extent than in the North, and 

 the early crop is generally suddenly cut short by the access of drought and 

 extreme heat about mid-summer, so that while the South can produce an 

 early crop, and can produce the forced winter crop more cheaply than the 

 North, the general crop for canning purposes will probably be always mainly 

 produced in the Middle States , East and West. While farmers in Maryland 

 can grow the fruit on contract for the canning houses at $6 per ton, the man 

 in North Carolina who undertook to do the same thing (outside the mountain 



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