October 12, 1893. ] 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
826 
S PECIAL interest attaches to Tomatoes this season, for it has been 
an altogther exceptional one in respect to natural advantages, 
and consequently the crops have been abundant. Remunerative 
returns have been secured throughout the season, these varying, as 
they always will do, according to the market and the quality. At 
the middle of July a capable grower in the midlands told me that 
he had been securing Is. a pound up till that time, and although 
the majority of the cultivators in the south who supply the 
principal London markets have not realised so much, their returns 
have been consistently good, and they will have cause to look back 
upon 1893 without the sadness and regret which tinge their recol 
lections of some previous seasons. 
It is disappointing, to say the least of it, that when the Eden 
of the Tomato growers was at its fairest a new serpent should have 
entered. Phytophthora infestans and the Gladosporium have often 
proved their capacity for giving quite as much trouble and 
embarrassment as most growers are able to cope with, and the 
advent of a fresh enemy in the Bacterium Halstedi, so graphically 
described by Mr. Abbey a few weeks ago, is something approaching 
the nature of the proverbial last straw. In all likelihood this 
bacterial affection of the Tomato is quite unknown to the majority 
of the growers, and especially to such of them as consider them¬ 
selves quite above the necessity for reading the papers ; but it is 
quite likely to spread widely unless something of its cause and 
origin are known. All cultivators are not open to knowledge when 
it is imparted as the result of microscopical investigation. For 
one reason or another they connect such inquiry with abstruse and 
devious scientific calculation that has not, and never can have, any 
practical bearing. There is certainly justification for such a view 
in some cases, but I venture to think that where the investigator 
is not only a scientist, but a thoroughly practical gardener, what he 
has to tell us is deserving of the most careful consideration. Some 
of the market growers, as well as a number of private cultivators; 
are of the same opinion, and I happen to know that the success of 
Mr. Abbey’s able inquiries into the Tomato disease and the Chrys¬ 
anthemum mite have attracted the attention of some of the best 
and most enlightened of our cultivators. 
About the middle of August Mr. Wood, foreman to the 
energetic Kentish market grower, Mr. E, Vinson, wrote—“I have 
been reading the correspondence on Tomatoes dying in the Journal 
of Horticulture, and if you could give me a call you would see for 
yourself what the disease is capable of doing. We have 8000 
plants in one block of houses, three parts of them dead ; in another 
block over 8000 plants carrying a grand crop, and we have not lost 
fifty plants out of the latter. If you will come I will give you 
my views of the cause.” I took an early opportunity of going; 
and saw what I can only characterise as a very remarkable sight. 
First let me say that Mr. Vinson is not a Tomato man merely. 
He is a large Hop grower, and has numbers of acres of Strawberries, 
Raspberries, Potatoes, Scarlet Runners, Cauliflowers and others. 
Probably there is no more enlightened and energetic man in the 
whole trade. He grows many things and does them all well. In 
the case of Tomatoes it would be very difficult indeed to find 
better grown plants than his. Those in the fruiting batch were 
splendid examples of culture, being stout, sturdy, short-jointed 
examples, bearing almost from the ground to the ridge of the 
No. 694.— VoL. XXVII., Thibd Sebies. 
house. There were about twenty-five houses of Cucumbers and 
Tomatoes, but the latter were the most strongly represented. The 
variety chiefly grown is Earliest of All, which is well known to be 
a very free setter, but has more or less corrugated fruit. In this 
case it is, however, found to sell well so long as good and well 
coloured fruit is sent to market, but it may be noted that there is 
a great deal of variation exhibited by the fruits, some being very 
much smoother than others. 
I draw attention to the good quality of the fruiting plants, 
because I want to make it clear that Tomato growing is well 
understood by Mr. Vinson’s foreman, and that the loss of so many 
plants from the disease which Mr. Abbey has told us about is not 
due to ignorance of the wants of the plant. That the disease is 
Bacterium Halstedi there can be little doubt, and Mr. Wood was 
of that opinion from the moment of reading the article on page 
471, June 15lh, 1893. The plants went off exactly as there 
indicated, beginning to droop as a rule just when the first bunch of 
fruit was swelling, as though they were too feeble to undergo the 
strain. There was the browning of the wood under the skin 
at the base of the plant, which gradually spread upward, and soon 
the whole of the foliage was wilted and drooping. The spectacle 
they presented as they hung withered and lifeless was a most 
melancholy one, and the wholesale manner in which they had 
gone off was a striking testimony to the potency of the minute 
enemy. 
The questions now arise : What causes the attack, and can it be 
averted in any way ? These queries are of the greatest moment 
to all classes of cultivators, and particularly to those who grow 
Tomatoes as a means of livelihood. If the disease is capable of 
carrying off thousands of plants in the hands of a really capable 
man, what guarantee is there that it will not deal out similar 
destruction to those of others, and so become a most formidable 
enemy ? I might go even further, and without wishing to pose 
as an alarmist, ask what security we have against the disease 
becoming as terrible an enemy to Tomatoes as the Puccinia was 
to Hollyhocks, rendering their successful cultivation almost an 
impossibility. Fortunately Mr. Wood is not a rule of thumb 
grower, but one who uses his brains, and he has paid the closest 
possible attention and given the utmost consideration to the task of 
finding out the true cause of the attack which has rendered a large 
proportion of his work futile and entailed no inconsiderable loss 
on his employer. And he has been rewarded by what he thinks 
to be a complete solution of the problem. The explanation turns 
on a purely cultural point, and may perhaps be too simple for 
Mr. Abbey to accept, but such as it is I draw attention to it for the 
benefit of others. 
Excess of moisture is at the root of many fungoid attacks, but 
it is the opposite condition which the Kentish grower holds re¬ 
sponsible for the bacterial attack in his Tomatoes. He holds 
strongly that drought is as much the predisposing cause as sodden- 
ing is of the Phytophthora, and in support of his argument he 
points lo the differing condition of two sets of plants. One was 
put out after Cucumbers had occupied the space last season. The 
soakings the latter received resulted in the ground becoming 
thoroughly saturated. Here the Tomatoes have done splendidly, 
bearing heavy crops of fine fruit, and very few plants have been 
lost. The other set, where such havoc has been wrought, were 
planted in compost placed cn a dry subsoil. They have been 
watered, but owing to the terribly parching season the lower soil 
has never been completely soaked, and here the Tomatoes have 
gone off wholesale. These facts are very significant, and even if 
everybody does not accept them as a solution at once they will 
doubtless admit that “ there is something in it.” As affording 
further evidence of the great benefits of an adequate supply of 
water Mr. Wood pointed out how much better and more fruitful 
the Tomatoes which are near the tanks, or near a leaky tap, or 
where the hose has been thrown down, are than those in other 
No. 2360.—VOL. LXXXIX., Old Seeieb. 
