TOMATOES 273 



plants in pots in the cold frames. A bed of coal ashes makes the best place 

 in which to plunge pots to save watering and to protect them from frost. 

 I'ots set upon the ground soon get filled with earth worms to the detriment 

 of the plants, but when set on coal ashes or plunged in them the worms have 

 no chance, for they will not crawl through the ashes. Then, too, there is no 

 inducement for the roots to run out through the hole in the bottom of the 

 pots, as when they arc placed on soil, and if any do get out they are easily 

 removed from the ashes entire. Coal ashes applied to a sandy soil will make 

 it more retentive of moisture and less inclined to be leachy. 



THE FORCING HOUSE FOR TOMATOES. 



For the purpose of winter forcing tomatoes we prefer a full even-span 

 house twenty feet wide, with a space in the centre for setting the boxes of pots, 

 and benches on the sides that can be used for the .forcing of beans or other 

 dwarf er growing plants, that need about the same temperature as the toma- 

 toes ; or for bringing on the second crop for the replanting of the house. The 

 house should be not less than ten feet to the ridge in the centre, the glass 

 should have a slope of 45 degrees, and the house should run north and south 

 so that both sides will have sun at different times of the day. A narrow lean- 

 to house may be used and the plants set on the front bench and trained on 

 wires under the glass, as we do grapes, but in this case the slope of glass 

 should be to the south. In a very narrow house of this kind, with the glass 

 a steep incline to the south, the crop may perhaps be earlier in setting and 

 the house more easily heated than in the span-roof house, and the second 

 crop may be started against the back wall and get the sunlight after the front 

 vines have been taken out; but we greatly prefer the span-roof house. In 

 such a house, with each plant trained to a single stem and allowed two feet 

 square of space, there should be, during the winter, a crop of two pounds for 

 every square foot of space in the house. The crop here usually commands 

 <?~> cents per pound 'in winter, hence a house with 1,000 square feet of surface 

 should produce 2,000 pounds of fruit, worth $500. Whether such a crop 

 will be profitable or not will depend on the cost of heating the house, and here 

 the Southern forcer will have a great advantage over the grower in the colder 

 sections, in the fact that he needs to use less coal and has far more sunlight 

 in winter, and sunlight counts for far more under glass than does fire heat. 



It is probable that the best style of house, though we have never tried it 

 for the tomato, would be that known generally as the Rose house, because it 

 is the form generally adopted for the winter forcing of roses for cutting in 

 winter. The shape of such a house is what is called three-quarters span ; that 



