“Them there in the pens certainly do look healthy,” said his friend. “But you ain't said what you was doin' here, Hiram, setting these stakes?”
“Why, I'll tell you,” returned Hiram. “This is my tomato patch.”
“By Jo!” ejaculated Henry. “You don't want to set tomatoes so fur apart, do you?”
“No, no,” laughed Hiram. “The posts are to string wires on. The tomatoes will be two feet apart in the row. As they grow I tie them to the wires, and so keep the fruit off the ground.
“The tomato ripens better and more evenly, and the fruit will come earlier, especially if I pinch back the ends of the vine from time to time, and remove some of the side branches.”
“We don't do all that to raise a tomato crop. And we'll put in five acres for the cannery this year, as usual,” said Henry, with some scorn.
“We run the rows out four feet apart, like you do, throwing up a list, in fact. Then father goes ahead with a stick, making a hole for the plant every three feet, so't they'll be check-rowed and we can cultivate them both ways—and we all set the plants.
“We never hand-hoe 'em—it don't pay. The cannery isn't giving but fifteen cents a basket this year—and it's got to be a full five-eighths basket, too, for they weigh 'em.”
Hiram looked at him with a quizzical smile.
“So you set about thirty-six hundred and forty plants to the acre?” he said.