TOMATO.
This vegetable is well known, and has recently come to be generally esteemed. It can always be grown without failure, and more easily and at one fourth of the cost of potatoes. Its use for cooking, eating raw, and pickling in various forms, is known to all. There are several varieties. The best of all is the large red—not the largest, but the smooth ones: although smaller, they contain more, and are much more conveniently used, than the very large rough or scolloped variety. The large yellow are less liable to decay on the vines, and have less of the tomato taste. The small plum-tomato, both red and yellow, and the pear or bell-shaped, are good for preserving as a common sweetmeat, and for pickling whole. They should be started in early hotbed—in February in the Middle States—and transplanted after frosts are over, in rows eight feet apart each way. That distance will leave none too much room for letting in the sun and for the convenience of picking. They will mature on the poorest land; but the amount of the crop is graduated altogether by the richness of the soil, and the care given them. They will produce frequently a bushel to a vine, lying on the ground. But they ripen better, and as the vines are not injured by picking the early ones, they will produce more, by being trained up. A few sticks to hold them up at first, and let them break down over them later, is of no use. Train them, and tie up all the principal bunches, and they will be greatly benefited thereby. Tied to slats, or any board fence, in a kind of fan-training form, they do very well. In all cities and villages, enough for a large family can be grown on twenty-five feet of board-fence, exposed to the southern or eastern sun, and not occupy the ground a single foot from the fence. Drive in nails, and tie up the branches as they grow. Removing some of the branches and leaves, and letting in the sun, or placing the fruit on a shingle or stone, hastens its ripening.
TOOLS.
It is no part of our design to go into any general description of agricultural implements. There are constant changes and improvements, and they are introduced at once to the whole country by the inventors or dealers. We also wish to avoid all participation in the controversies respecting the merits of various new inventions. We have several forms of cultivators, horse-hoes, subsoil-plows, drills, seed-sowers, land-diggers, and drainers, various formed plows, root-cleaners, corn-planters, &c., &c. These possess different degrees of merit; all have their day, and will be superseded by others, in the general advancement that marks the science of soil-culture. We strongly recommend the use of the best tools, especially subsoil-plows, seed-planters, and root-cleaners. Always have a tool-house, as much as you do a kitchen. Use the best tools; never lay them down but in their proper place; and always clean them before putting them away. Keep all the wood-work of tools well painted, and the iron and steel in a condition, by the application of oil and otherwise, to prevent rust. Good tools facilitate and cheapen cultivation, and increase the yield of crops, Money paid out for such tools is well expended.
TRAINING.
This is a matter that has received much attention from all fruit-growers. The influence of different modes of training and pruning is very great on the bearing qualities of trees. The peculiarities demanded by the various fruit-trees, vines, and bushes, are given under these articles respectively. We give here only some general principles. The health, beauty, and profit, of most fruit-trees depend upon judicious pruning and training. The following are the general objects:—
1. To secure regular growth and prevent deformities, and thus promote the health of trees.
2. To secure a sufficient number of fruit-bearing shoots, and in right locations, and to throw sufficient sap into those shoots to enable them to mature the fruit. With a certain amount of pruning, you may double the quantity of fruit, or destroy half that the trees would have produced if not trained at all. One half of the fruit of any orchard depends upon correct pruning. It also has a great influence upon the quality of fruit. The cherry is almost the only fruit-tree that throws out nearly the right number of branches, and in the right places. It needs a very little direction while young, and afterward only the removal of decaying branches. The quince needs considerable trimming at first; but, the head once formed, it will need very little after-pruning. Next comes the plum, needing, perhaps, a little more pruning than the cherry or quince, but much less than the other fruits. The plum is apt to throw out strong branches, in some directions, quite out of proportion with the rest of the top. Such need shortening in, to distribute the sap equally through the tree, and thus produce a symmetrical form. This is all the trimming necessary. The roots of a plum-tree are usually stronger than the top, and absorb more than the leaves can digest; hence some of its diseases. The natural remedy would be root-pruning, and leaving the top in its natural state, except shortening-in the disproportioned branches. Removing much of the top of a plum-tree would ordinarily prove injurious. The apple needs considerable pruning, but not of the spurs and side-twigs which bear the fruit, but of limbs that grow too thick, and of disproportioned luxuriance. (See under Apple.) So the pear must be often slightly pruned to check the too vigorous growth and encourage the too tardy. The peach must be so pruned as to prevent the long bare poles so often seen, and to secure annually the growth of a large number of shoots for next year's bearing, and to check the flow of the sap by cutting off the ends of the growing young shoots, so as to cause the formation on each, of a few vigorous fruit-buds. Peach-trees, so pruned, will be healthy and do well for fifty years, and produce a larger number of better peaches than will grow on trees left in the usual way. By a system of pruning that will equalize the growth and strength, the bearing will be general on all the branches of the tree. This will make the fruit more abundant and of better quality. The following six principles—first stated by M. Dubreuil, of France, and since presented to the American people in Barry's "Fruit-Garden," and still later in Elliott's "Fruit-Book"—will guide any attentive cultivator into the correct method of pruning and training:—
1. The vigor of a tree, subject to pruning, depends, in a great measure, upon the equal distribution of sap in all its branches.
2. The sap acts with greater force, and produces more vigorous growth on a branch pruned short than on one pruned long.