Comet Group.—These trace mostly to English or other European origin and are increasingly used for greenhouse and for staking out-of-doors. Comet is small, flattened, slightly corrugated about the stem, of fine even red color, very firm and solid, with few very thick walled cells. Other names are Sunrise, and Lord Roberts. Several American forcing strains have been developed with at least one parent of this group—Ideal, Grand Rapids Forcing, Field Station Comet, Trellis, Michigan State Forcing, Lloyd Forcing, Blair Forcing and others.
King Humbert and San Marzano represent the small Italian oblong tomatoes that are prized for their thick walls, fine color and suitability for puree, paste and soup.
Ponderosa is popular for home garden, a "beef-steak" tomato of very large size, irregular shape, flat, pink, with many small cells and of very mild sub-acid flavor. It is best grown to single stem. Oxheart is large, heart shaped, pink and very meaty. Others of this general type may be had in red, yellow and orange flesh. In general, the whole group lacks in prolificacy.
Oddities.—Tomato fanciers often plant seed of Red and Yellow Pear, Cherry, Currant, Peach with its fuzzy skin, Plum and others. They are prized for preserves and for decoration. Ground Cherry or Husk Tomato is not a true tomato but belongs to a different genus (Physalis). It makes excellent preserves. Well do I remember sneaking off from the other kids for solitary plunder of the little row that was usually in Grandma's garden.
Comprehensive descriptions of leading varieties of tomatoes have been published by the United States Department of Agriculture in Miscellaneous Publication 160, the result of statistical and verbal notations over several years at five widely scattered stations of the country.
IV
STRONG PLANTS FOR EARLY
MATURITY AND HEAVY
CROP
One of the ways to make money from tomatoes is to mature them early, selling while the price is still high. There is a big difference between $.10 a pound and $.10 a basket. Shipped and ripened green wrap tomatoes cannot be very cheap on northern markets even though Southern growers may realize little for them.