300 GARDENING FOR PROFIT. 



are now grown by farmers, under contract for canning 

 purposes, often as low as 30 cents per bushel, and, on 

 suitable land, even this low price will pay better than 

 most farm crops, as there is usually no necessity for 

 having the crop early for canning. 



There are always some one or more varieties, said to 

 be earlier than others, sent out every spring, but it must 

 be confessed that the varieties that we cultivated twenty 

 years ago are not a day behind in earliness those issued 

 as "vastly superior" in 1886. To test them thoroughly, 

 I planted twenty-five plants each of the four most popular 

 sorts, under circumstances exactly similar in all respects; 

 there was no difference whatever in earliness, and but 

 little perceptible difference in productiveness. 



In my opinion, the extreme point of earliness in Toma- 

 toes has been reached years ago, and now all further im- 

 provements must be in point of size, smoothness and so- 

 lidity ; and that any one laying claim to having good 

 varieties a specified number of days or weeks earlier than 

 those we already have, does so without having a knowledge 

 of the subject, or with the desire to impose on the public. 

 The Tomato is a plant requiring at all times a certain high 

 temperature to ripen its fruit ; and though it may ripen 

 in Georgia in May, in Virginia in June, in Delaware in 

 July, or in New Jersey in August, it requires the same 

 aggregate amount of heat to do the work. The same is 

 true of most fruits and vegetables ; we reach a certain 

 point of earliness with a given variety in a given locality, 

 when the temperature tells us we must stop. If improve- 

 ment in earliness were progressive, we might have reason 

 to expect that the Radish or Lettuce, which matures with 

 us in tlie open ground here in May, would yet mature 

 in April. 



I believe that our ordinary methods of saving Tomato 

 and all other seeds, in fact, do much to prevent us from 

 making any advance in procuring choice varieties ; if 



