TOMATOES. 139 



SETTING OUT. 



Before the plants are set out in the field they should 

 be hardened off, but this must be done quite carefully. 

 It is not a good practice to withhold the moisture all at 

 once, but it should be done gradually. In this way 

 the plants adapt themselves to particular conditions, 

 and are thus much better able to stand the shock 

 which they receive at setting out. A week or ten days 

 before the time the plants are ready to be set in the 

 field, just enough moisture should be applied to keep 

 the plants in the seed bed from becoming wilted. It 

 will be found that by following this from day to day 

 that the plants will be in a much better condition to 

 set out than they were at the time when hardening off 

 was begun. 



The distance at which tomatoes should be set varies 

 with the fertility of the field and with the varieties 

 used. If we have an ordinary field that produces 

 about 30 bushels of corn to the acre, and wish to use 

 about 1,000 pounds of fertilizer to the acre, it will be 

 well to plant in checks, four by four feet. If, how- 

 ever, the land is very fertile they may be planted as 

 close as three by three feet, or the rows may be planted 

 four feet apart, and the plants set two feet in the row. 



A great many devices for transplanting purposes 

 have been invented, but none seem to meet the de- 

 mand fully. Some machines are drawn by horse power 

 and others worked by hand. The greatest objection 

 against some of these is the cost of the implement. So, 

 for various reasons, up to the present time the bulk of 

 the crop is still transplanted by hand, and as this is 

 not an especially expensive operation, it will be con- 

 tinued for many years to come. A man or strong boy 

 can set out an acre of tomatoes in a day when they 

 are placed in checks four by four feet. Consequently, 



