The Canadian Horticulturist. 291 



ficient, it will often be advisable to reduce the area of wheat or oats, and 

 grow an acre ol garden stuff instead ; for the same work devoted to the 

 garden will pay you 500 per cent, profit above that realized from grain 

 culture. — From How to Make the Garden Pay. 



RIPENING TOMATOES FOR EARLY MARKET. 



IN growing tomatoes for market, the premium is and always has been on 

 earliness more than any other one thing. Whoever succeeds in getting 



his crop before the customers a week in advance of his competitors is 

 sure of a good price and of good profits, and this even when the fruit is not 

 up to the standard as to size and quality. 



This observation is not new, nor confined to this country. The market 

 gardeners about Paris, France, have also found it out some time ago, 

 and, as told in the Revue Horticole, often employ artifical means for 

 hastening the maturity of the crop. To do this, the fruit is picked when 

 yet green, but approaching maturity, and spread out upon a layer of straw 

 under the hot-bed sashes. Here they are lightly sprinkled from time to 

 time, to keep the atmosphere moist, and prevent them from shrivelling. 

 During the greatest heat, on bright days, partial shade must be provided, 

 else the tomatoes will be liable to get burned or scalded. 



It takes but a few days of such treatment to bring out the bright color of 

 maturity in the fruit, but the latter usually fails to attain to the full rich 

 flavor of the tomato when naturally ripened. The quality of specimens 

 picked in the more advanced stages of ripeness, however, as indicated by 

 even the slightest beginning of coloring, is not perceptibly impaired or 

 altered. Melons may be treated in a similar way for the purpose of 

 hastening their maturity. 



Our progressive market gardeners usually rely for their early friut 

 mostly on the sslection of such early varieties as King of the Earlies, 

 Earliest Advance, perhaps Dwarf Champion, etc., and on starting the 

 plants very early under glass. It may pay them to try the method here 

 described. — Popular Gardening. 



ii 



PICKING AND MARKETING GRAPES. 



INTAGE time," as it is still called, is the grape grower's harvest, 

 and is a very important and busy time of the season. It is one 

 thing to grow a good crop of grapes and another to gather and 

 market them properly and to the best advantage. 



Some vineyardists, who have not had the kind of experience that begets 

 wisdom, and being actuated by short-sighted cupidity, are tempted, and 

 sometimes do pick and ship fruit to the city markets when it is scarcely 



