144 
A KITCHEN GARDEN 
The young plants must be thoroughly cultivated 
and hoed ; when hoeing, the dirt should be loosened 
right up to the plant, and when it has been worked 
loose and made fine should be drawn up to the stem, 
two or three inches in height. It frequently hap¬ 
pens, when the season is late, that the plants have 
grown a foot, or even two feet, in height or length. 
This is no disadvantage, but rather a help, if treated 
in the following manner: A gutter two or three 
inches in depth and nearly the length of the plant, 
is scraped under the planting line with the hoe, and 
the plants laid lengthwise in this and covered over, 
all but about five or six inches of the top, which is 
bent straight upward and afterward treated as though 
it were a plant of that size; the long stem under¬ 
ground immediately forms roots and assists in feed¬ 
ing the growth of the plant. 
The ground should be well manured, but if the 
soil is light it can be overdone, as the plant will run 
too much to vine and be late in producing fruit. I 
have found that, though there is a general impression 
that tomatoes do best on a light, sandy soil, the best 
tomatoes I have ever raised have been on my poorest 
and heaviest ground. On a plot of ground where 
the plow turned up the yellow clay at a depth of five 
or six inches, I have had the ground covered ; cov¬ 
ered so that you could hardly put your foot down 
anywhere in the patch without treading on a tomato, 
and not a cracked or rotten one among them. At 
another time I planted all the plants there were at 
that time of the now famous Turner Hybrid, in a 
patch of clay soil where young nursery trees had been 
