1906 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



601 



ey like that. He said he was getting 20 cts. 

 a section at retail in consideration of the 

 extra quality. But if he had such sections 

 of honey in some big" city, and could give 

 the people a taste before purchasing, I 

 should not wonder if they would bring half 

 a dollar instead of 20 cts. Mr. Forsyth is a 

 boy of only 19, and is comparatively new in 

 the honey business; but in the neatness of 

 his apiary and the quality of his honey I do 

 not know but he is outstripping many of the 

 veterans. May God bless the boys for what 

 they are doing and for what they have done 

 for the cause of improved bee culture. 



TOMATO-GROWING ON THE FLORIDA KEYS. 



When we came on our island in the fall, 

 Mr. Shumard had, perhaps, a quarter of an 

 acre of tomatoes. They were bearing a lit- 

 tle. While there was no frost during the 

 winter to injure them, the cold storms did 

 have a depressing effect, and the tomatoes 

 seemed much disposed to send out long shoots 

 or vines, sometimes crawling on the ground 

 ten feet or more instead of bearing fruit. 

 Some time in April they commenced to do a 

 little better, but nothing very satisfactory. 

 Along in March he planted about an acre, of 

 different ground, with plants from three to 

 six inches high, grown in a seed-bed. I 

 never saw tomato- plants take hold and grow, 

 even here in the North, as did these plants, 

 and in two or three weeks they were great 

 handsome symmetrical tomatoes. It was 

 hardly time for them to bear fruit when I 

 left; but some of the same kind in my little 

 garden made a tremendous growth but bore 

 no fruit. I was so much pleased that I train- 

 ed them on stakes and let them run up near- 

 ly as high as my head. 



Well, during my visit to Mr. Clytt, at 

 Terra Ceia island, I got a suggestion. Aft- 

 ter his tomatoes were two or three feet high, 

 tied to stakes, he commenced a severe prun- 

 ing. He told me there would be no fruit at 

 all if the young shoots, starting out in dif- 

 ferent places, usually near the ground, were 

 permitted to take the growth away from 

 the old plant. You know how it is in an ap- 

 ple-orchard. If you let sprouts grow up 

 around the base of the tree they will take 

 all the growth, and the tree itself will die. 

 This same thing has happened in our bass- 

 wood orchard. Where a tree is not grafted 

 it may be well, sometimes, to let one of the 

 sprouts make a new and better- shaped tree. 

 I have not had experience in this matter. 

 But now to get back to the tomatoes. 



Mr. Clytt said that, in order to get fruit, 

 especially where the ground is so highly 

 fertilized, these thrifty bright-green shoots 

 must be constantly pruned off. There ia 

 something of this kind in our tomato-book, 

 but it has not been emphazied as strongly as 

 he gave it. He is probably one of the most 

 successful tomato-growers in Florida, and 

 perhaps in the country. While he gets 

 three crops from his ground every year, no 

 resting or letting up, each crop sells at a 

 price per acre not only up into the hundreds 

 but into the thousands, oftentimes. Celery 

 is usually grown during the winter season in 

 the coldest weather. After celery they put 

 in tomatoes, egg-plant, cabbage, snap beans, 

 cucumbers, or whatever seems to be in the 

 greatest demand. Where it is possible, the 

 second crop is started growing before the 

 previous crop is harvested. In that way the 

 ground is constantly "kept busy." I asked 

 him if he could secure such crops without 

 being constantly on the ground personally. 

 He said he could not. At one time he ven- 

 tured to take a vacation of about six weeks; 

 but in spite of the best men he could get to 

 put in charge during his absence, every 

 thing went wrong until he got back on the 

 ranch. 



A stream of artesian water from a four- 

 inch pipe is constantly pouring forth more 

 than is ever needed to water his ground in 

 the very driest time. But this very water 

 that is such a splendid servant will work a 

 world of mischief unless some one with long 

 experience handles it just right. 



He gave us a big bunch of onions to take 

 along when we left— some of them almost the 

 size of dinner-plates. His ground is kept 

 absolutely clean, and it is also kept constant- 

 ly stirred so as to let the air go down among 

 the roots of the plants.^ 



Perhaps I might mention right here that 

 Mr. Rood, in his strawberry- growing, has 

 never used irrigation at all. He has found 

 that a constant stirring of the ground is 

 easier for him than it would probably be to 

 use the water, even if he had it. He show- 

 ed me one patch of berries where he had 

 tried to make a mulch take the place of con- 

 stant cultivation. The ground that was stir- 

 red every day between the plants, and kept 

 hoed up mellow, gave very much better re- 

 sults than the mulched part did. Of course, 

 this constant cultivation during the bearing 

 season gets sand and grit on the berries; 

 but, as I have mentioned before, his berries 

 are all washed, and taken right to his cus- 

 tomers, to be used immediately. In this 

 way the berries are just as fresh as if you 

 picked them in your garden and took them 

 direct to the table; and as Braidentown is 

 rapidly growing, the prospects are that his 

 local market will take all the berries he can 

 raise for quite a spell, especially if he con- 

 tinues to care for five apiaries of bees. At 

 the time of our visit he was getting that 

 beautiful orange-blossom honey from all or 

 nearly all his apiaries, and at the same time 

 he was harvesting his strawberries daily. 

 No wonder he is bicsy. 



