MARKET NURSERY WORK 



VOL II. 



GLASSHOUSE CROPS 



CHAPTER I. 



TOMATOES 



IT would be exceedingly difficult to overrate the importance of 

 the tomato crop to English growers. During many years of 

 practical experience we have been closely identified with the 

 industry, both as growers and in association with specialists. 

 Our first experience of it dates back to a dim past, in the early 

 seventies, when a few plants were grown against a wall in the 

 kitchen garden, and the weekly requirements of a " big house " 

 were half a dozen fruits a week just to flavour soups. Compare 

 this with the demands of to-day and the thousands of tons 

 annually produced and you will get a very fair idea of the 

 stupendous growth of this industry within the lifetime of one 

 generation. If any ocular demonstration is yet needed, we 

 advise a pilgrimage around the northern outskirts of London, 

 Worthing, and Guernsey, and if that does not impress, then we 

 fear that no words of ours can. 



In the course of our experiences, we have seen perhaps the 

 best the world can show in tomato culture, and, unfortunately, 

 we have seen some ghastly failures. It is the fervent hope 

 that we may be able to help prevent the latter which influences 

 all we may here have to write. 



The native habitat of the tomato is the hot, dry regions of 

 Central America, and this fact ought to be ever in the mind 

 of the grower. We cannot reproduce those conditions here, 

 but we should do our utmost to approximate them. We can 

 produce the heat, we can regulate the moisture, but try as we 

 may we cannot avoid unfavourable days which sometimes 

 lengthen themselves out to weeks. Unfavourable climatic 



