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                 TOMATO CULTURE


  A PRACTICAL TREATISE ON THE TOMATO, ITS HISTORY,
  CHARACTERISTICS, PLANTING, FERTILIZATION,
  CULTIVATION IN FIELD, GARDEN, AND GREENHOUSE,
  HARVESTING, PACKING, STORING, MARKETING, INSECT
  ENEMIES AND DISEASES, WITH METHODS OF CONTROL AND
  REMEDIES, ETC., ETC.


                     By

                WILL W. TRACY

            _Bureau of Plant Industry,
     United States Department of Agriculture_


               _ILLUSTRATED_


                  NEW YORK

             ORANGE JUDD COMPANY

                    1907


                     To

              Dr. F. M. Hexamer

    IN HONOR OF HIS LIFELONG EFFORTS FOR THE
      BETTERMENT OF AMERICAN HORTICULTURAL
                   PRACTICE


             Copyright, 1907, by
             ORANGE JUDD COMPANY
            _All rights reserved_

[Illustration: WHERE NEW VARIETIES OF TOMATOES ARE DEVELOPED AND TESTED
(By courtesy _American Agriculturist_. Photo by Prof. W. G. Johnson)]




PREFACE


This little book has been written in fulfilment of a promise made many
years ago. Again and again I have undertaken the work, only to lay it
aside because I felt the need of greater experience and wider knowledge.
I do not now feel that this deficiency has been by any means fully
supplied, but in some directions it has been removed through the
kindness of Dr. F. H. Chittenden of the Bureau of Entomology, who wrote
the chapter on insect enemies, and of W. A. Orton of the Bureau of Plant
Industry, United States Department of Agriculture, who wrote the chapter
on diseases of tomatoes.

I have made free use of, without special credit, and am largely indebted
to, the writings of Doctor Sturtevant and Professor Goff, Professor
Munson of Maine, Professor Halsted of New Jersey, Professor Corbett of
Washington, Professor Rolfs of Florida, Professor Bailey of New York,
Professor Green of Ohio, and many others. I have also found a vast
amount of valuable information in the agricultural press of this country
in general. I am also indebted to L. B. Coulter and Prof. W. G. Johnson
for many photographs. My thanks are also due B. F. Williamson, who made
the excellent drawings for this book under Professor Johnson's
direction.

Tomatoes are among the most generally used and popular vegetables. They
are grown not only in gardens, but in large areas in every state from
Maine to California and Washington to Florida, and under very different
conditions of climate, soil and cultural facilities, as well as of
requirements as to character of fruit. The methods which will give the
best results under one set of conditions are entirely unsuited to
others.

I have tried to give the nature and requirements of the plant and the
effect of conditions as seen in my own experience, a knowledge of which
may enable the reader to follow the methods most suited to his own
conditions and requirements, rather than to recommend the exact methods
which have given me the best results.

WILL W. TRACY.

_Washington, April, 1907._




  CONTENTS

                                                    PAGE

  PREFACE                                             v

  CHAPTER I

    BOTANY OF THE TOMATO                              1

  CHAPTER II

    HISTORY                                          14

  CHAPTER III

    GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE PLANT             20

  CHAPTER IV

    ESSENTIALS FOR DEVELOPMENT                       28

  CHAPTER V

    SELECTION OF SOIL FOR MAXIMUM CROP               33

  CHAPTER VI

    EXPOSURE AND LOCATION                            38

  CHAPTER VII

    FERTILIZERS                                      43

  CHAPTER VIII

    PREPARATION OF THE SOIL                          46

  CHAPTER IX

    HOTBEDS AND COLD-FRAMES                          51

  CHAPTER X

    STARTING PLANTS                                  59

  CHAPTER XI

    PROPER DISTANCE FOR PLANTING                     68

  CHAPTER XII

    CULTIVATION                                      76

  CHAPTER XIII

    STAKING, TRAINING AND PRUNING                    79

  CHAPTER XIV

    RIPENING, GATHERING, HANDLING AND MARKETING      90
    THE FRUIT

  CHAPTER XV

    ADAPTATION OF VARIETIES                          97

  CHAPTER XVI

    SEED BREEDING AND GROWING                       112

  CHAPTER XVII

    PRODUCTION FOR CANNING                          117

  CHAPTER XVIII

    COST OF PRODUCTION                              121

  CHAPTER XIX

    INSECTS INJURIOUS TO THE TOMATO                 123

  CHAPTER XX

    TOMATO DISEASES                                 131

  INDEX                                             148




ILLUSTRATIONS

  FIGURE                                            PAGE

   1. Where new varieties of tomatoes are developed
         and tested                             _Frontispiece_

   2. Tomato flowers                                  2

   3. Two-celled tomato                               3

   4. Three-celled tomato                             3

   5. Currant tomato and characteristic clusters      5

   6. Red cherry tomato                               6

   7. Pear-shaped tomato                              8

   8. Yellow plum tomato                              9

   9. One of the first illustrations of the tomato   11

  10. An early illustration of the tomato            12

  11. Typical bunch of modern tomatoes               27

  12. Tomatoes trained to stakes in the South        35

  13. Three-sash hotbed                              52

  14. Cross-section of hotbed                        53

  15. Cold-frames on hill-side                       54

  16. Transplanting tomatoes under cloth-covered
         frames                                      56

  17. Spotting-board for use in cold-frames          61

  18. Spotting-board for use on flat                 62

  19. Tomatoes sown and allowed to grow in hotbeds   69

  20. Planting tomatoes on a Delaware farm           75

  21. Training tomatoes in Florida to single stake   81

  22. Tomato plant trained to single stake           82

  23. Method of training to three stems in
         forcing-house and out of doors              83

  24. Training on line in greenhouse                 84

  25. Ready to transplant in greenhouse              85

  26. Training young tomatoes in greenhouse at New
         York experiment station                     86

  27. Tomatoes in greenhouse at the Ohio
         experiment station                          87

  28. Forcing tomatoes in greenhouse at New Hampshire
         experiment station                          88

  29. Florida tomatoes properly wrapped for long
         shipment                                    93

  30. Greenhouse tomatoes packed for market          95

  31. Buckeye State, showing long nodes and distance
         between fruit clusters                      98

  32. Stone, and characteristic foliage              99

  33. Atlantic Prize, and its normal foliage        101

  34. Dwarf Champion                                103

  35. A cutworm and parent moth                     124

  36. Flea-beetle                                   125

  37. Margined blister beetle                       125

  38. Tomato worm                                   126

  39. Tomato stalk-borer                            127

  40. Characteristic work of the tomato fruit worm  128

  41. Adult moth, or parent of tomato fruit worm    129

  42. Proper way to make Bordeaux                   137

  43. Point-rot disease of the tomato               140




TOMATO CULTURE




CHAPTER I

Botany of the Tomato


=The common tomato= of our gardens belongs to the natural order
_Solanaceae_ and the genus _Lycopersicum_. The name from _lykos_, a
wolf, and _persica_, a peach, is given it because of the supposed
aphrodisiacal qualities, and the beauty of the fruit. The genus
comprises a few species of South American annual or short-lived
perennial, herbaceous, rank-smelling plants in which the many branches
are spreading, procumbent, or feebly ascendent and commonly 2 to 6 feet
in length, though under some conditions, particularly in the South and
in California, they grow much longer. They are covered with resinous
viscid secretions and are round, soft, brittle and hairy, when young,
but become furrowed, angular, hard and almost woody with enlarged
joints, when old. The leaves are irregularly alternate, 5 to 15 inches
long, petioled, odd pinnate, with seven to nine short-stemmed leaflets,
often with much smaller and stemless ones between them. The larger
leaflets are sometimes entire, but more generally notched, cut, or even
divided, particularly at the base.

[Illustration: FIG. 2--TOMATO FLOWERS ENLARGED ABOUT 2-1/2 TIMES.
SECTION OF FLOWER SHOWN AT RIGHT (Drawn from a photograph by courtesy of
Prof. L. C. Corbett)]

=The flowers= are pendant and borne in more or less branched clusters,
located on the stem on the opposite side and usually a little below the
leaves; the first cluster on the sixth to twelfth internode from the
ground, with one on each second to sixth succeeding one. The flowers
(Fig. 2) are small, consisting of a yellow, deeply five-cleft,
wheel-shaped corolla, with a very short tube and broadly lanceolate,
recurving petals. The calyx consists of five long linear or lanceolate
sepals, which are shorter than the petals at first, but are persistent,
and increase in size as the fruits mature. The stamens, five in number,
are borne on the throat of the corolla, and consist of long, large
anthers, borne on short filaments, loosely joined into a tube and
opening by a longitudinal slit on the inside, and this is the chief
botanical distinction between this genus and _Solanum_ to which the
potato, pepper, night shade and tobacco belong. The anthers in the
latter genus open at the tip only. The two genera, however, are closely
related and plants belonging to