NORTH CAROLINA TOMATOES. 



555 



will usually get well rooted before the ground freezes. 

 This is a good time, too, to give the strawberry bed a 

 final weeding. If done carefully, it is a work requiring 

 both much time and patience, but will bring its reward. 



As soon as practicable, we northern folk gather the 

 watermelons and place them in a sunny spot near the 

 house to finish ripening, covering them cold nights. I 

 find this is the only sure way of reserving the melons for 

 home consumption. It is strange what a peculiar tempt- 

 ation a fair ripe melon holds for some people, especially 



for those who toil not, and those who are of " Afric's 

 sunny clime." 



Keep the garden ' ' cleared up " as you go along ; leave 

 nothing decaying on the ground— refuse fruit and vege- 

 tables, cabbage leaves, turnip tops — to attract flies and 

 pollute the air 



Keep everything "picked up," as the housekeepers 

 say, and your garden will never look untidy or neglected, 

 but always attractive and interesting, 



PlynioKtli Co., Mass. M. E. Vigneron. 



NORTH CAROLINA TOMATOES. 



IE CONFESS that tomato cul- 

 ture in this part of North Car- 

 olina is a puzzle to us. Here 

 we are in the latter half of July 

 and on plants raised from seed 

 sown in January, transplanted 

 and forwarded under glass, and 

 hardened off in cold frames, we 

 have had only here and there a ripe fruit ! A 

 bushel basket would hold, to-day, all the home 

 grown tomatoes in the Raleigh markets and pro- 

 vision stores combined. In fact, during two sum- 

 mers and part of the third, which 1 have spent in 

 Raleigh, I have never seen a bushel of tomatoes 

 offered for sale. They are sold by the dozen all sum- 

 mer through. This season is particularly unusual. 

 The daily downpour of torrents of rain has kept the 

 vines growing with wonderful vigor, but no ripe 

 fruit. Last year our early plants gave us ripe fruit 

 May 25, and plenty in early half of June. Then 

 came a sudden dry spell with intense heat, and 

 cooked the whole. Plants from seed sown in June 



came on and made a fine crop in autumn. The 

 problem of midsummer and August tomatoes is a 

 serious one here. Last week, in Baltimore, I saw 

 the market stalls piled high with splendid tomatoes 

 produced in the adjoining county, while here, hun- 

 dreds of miles south, they are selling rough, knotty, 

 half ripe and cooked fruit in strawberry boxes. 

 Fifty miles west of us great crops of magnificent 

 tomatoes are grown and canned, furnishing the best 

 canned tomatoes in the market, and all through the 

 mountain country of North Carolina the tomatoes are 

 superb. But here about the capital city fresh toma- 

 toes in midsummer are a luxury hard to get and 

 hard to grow. The fall crop from plants just set 

 will doubtless be good, but the market growers 

 about Raleigh do not seem to have paid much at- 

 tention to these, and the market is never supplied. 



How to circumvent the climate and get good to- 

 matoes in July and August is a problem that is yet 

 to be solved. At present, first class tomotoes in sum- 

 mer are practically unknown in Raleigh. 



W. F. Massey. 



