Early ripening sorts are frequently irregular in shape, have comparatively thin walls, large seed cavities, and numerous seeds. The fruit is apt to color and ripen unevenly, remaining green around the stem, or to contain a hard green core. Later-ripening sorts, while not all superior to the others, have as a rule thicker and firmer walls, smaller seed cavities, and few seeds.
The most highly developed varieties now make few seeds and ripen evenly. These characteristics of the fruits are important factors in determining their fitness for special purposes. Medium-sized, smooth, spherical fruits, which ripen evenly and have small seed cavities and thick walls are especially suited to long-distance shipment. These qualities should enter into every sort selected to the greatest possible degree consistent with earliness, lateness, heavy yield, or any other special quality which gives the variety a marked commercial advantage. The following list is made up of varieties possessing some markedly distinct character, such as earliness, great size, purple, red, or yellow color, dwarf habit, etc.:
Early Ripening Varieties.—Sparks' Earliana, Atlantic Prize, Early Freedom.
Large-Fruited Varieties.—Ponderosa, Beefsteak.
Purple-Fruited Varieties.—Beauty, Acme, Imperial.
Red-Fruited Varieties.—Favorite (late), Honor Bright, Matchless, Stone, Royal Red, New Jersey.
Yellow-Fruited Varieties.—Golden Queen, Lemon Blush.
Dwarf or Tree Types.—Dwarf Champion, Station Upright Tree, Aristocrat.
Potato-Leaf Types.—Livingston's Potato-Leaf, Mikado, Turner's Hybrid.
The Tomato as a Field Crop at the South.—Commercial tomato growing in the Southern States is almost exclusively confined to the production of tomatoes at a season when they can not be grown at the North, except in greenhouses. On this account the commercial production of this crop is restricted to areas where there is very little, if any, freezing during the winter months.