June, 1907 



AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



239 



An Apple Tomato and an Apple 



the flavor is much hke canned strawberries. This sort is 

 very easy to grow and self sows. The fruit may be stored 

 in its husks and kept till almost mid-winter in a cool dry 

 spot. It is recommended for pies and to dry for use in cakes. 



As well as supplying an object of interest in the garden 

 these fruit tomatoes will be found very useful for various 

 sorts of preserves and pickles, recipes for which are seen 

 in numerous cook-books. The yellow pears are scalded, 

 skinned, cooked with sugar and dried. The yellow plums 

 are quite commonly used for preserves, with sugar, lemon 

 and ginger root. Any small fancy tomato in the green state 

 makes attractive pickles, put up whole, first pricking with 

 a pin to prevent bursting, and pickling in vinegar with nas- 

 turtium seeds. Any of the yellow sorts make a good marma- 

 lade, cooketi with sugar and grated pineapple. Tomato 

 honey may also be made from any of the yellow kinds. They 

 are combined with lemon and sugar, cooked, strained, and 

 cooked again till thick. Any sort of fancy tomato makes 

 excellent chopped pickles when used green. Having more 

 skin in proportion they chop more firmly and keep their 

 shape better than the larger sorts which are apt to become 

 mushy. 



Some of these curious tomatoes should be grown in every 



A Peach and Two Peach Tomatoes 



garden. Even a sunny city yard need not despair of a good 

 crop, for tomatoes do not require rich soil, and they may be 

 grown on very little space if trained to a tall trellis, which 

 will have the further acivantage of providing a screen. A 

 six-foot trellis will accommodate a tomato plant to each 

 running foot. About a month after setting out the plants, 

 pruning should begin and be kept up till toward the end of 

 the summer, when the most vigorous growth ceases. Two 

 or three lengthwise stems will be enough to leave for each 

 plant, the rest should be cut off, also all growth below the 

 first blossom cluster. 



It is not often that plants of the fancy tomatoes can be 

 bought. Any would-be gardener with a sunny window may 

 raise his own. The smallest pinch of seed of each kind 

 will be more than enough. A dozen two or three-inch pots 

 will start the whole collection of odd tomatoes. When two 



A Dish of Tomato Fruit 



inches high they require more space. Those mentioned in 

 this article were sown from March 29th to April iith, 

 which gave sufficiently early returns for an ordinary home 

 garden. Seed sown outdoors May ist produced ripe toma- 

 toes in September, and some sown as an experiment, July 4th, 

 gave tomatoes of pickling size in October. The season may 

 be lengthened almost to the holidays by hanging the vines 

 in a sheltered place when frost comes, or laying the unripe 

 but full-sized fruit in a drawer or closet. 



Young tomato plants are damaged by too much moisture, 

 but a lack of it, when they are forming fruit, will give 

 wrinkled and poor shaped tomatoes. The fancy sorts grow 

 in clusters of a dozen, more or less; this adds to the attrac- 

 tiveness of their appearance and causes them to be easily 

 picked. 



