CHAPTER XV
Adaptation of Varieties
Whatever may be their botanical origin, the modern varieties of cultivated tomatoes vary greatly in many respects, and while these differences are always of importance their relative importance differs with conditions. When the great desideratum is the largest possible yield of salable fruit at the least expenditure of labor, the qualities of the vine may be the most important ones to be considered, while in private gardens and for a critical home market and where closer attention and better cultivation can be given, they may be of far less importance than qualities of fruit.
Habits of growth.—Whether it be standard or dwarf, compact or spreading, is sometimes of great importance as fitting the sorts for certain soils and methods of culture. On heavy, moist, rich land, where staking and pruning are essential to the production of fruit of the best quality, it is of importance that we use sorts whose habits of growth fit them for it; while on warm, sandy, well-drained land, staking and pruning may be of little value, and a different habit of growth more desirable. We have sorts in which the vine is relatively strong growing with few branches, upright, with long nodes and small fruit clusters well scattered over the vine. They are usually very productive through a long season but generally late in maturing. Stocks of this type are sometimes sold, I think improperly, as giant climbing, or Tree tomato. The Buckeye State is a good type of these sorts. (Fig. 31.)
FIG. 31—BUCKEYE STATE, SHOWING LONG NODES AND DISTANCE BETWEEN FRUIT CLUSTERS
Other varieties make a stout and vigorous but shorter growth, with more and heavier branches, shorter nodes and many small medium-sized clusters of fruit well distributed over the plant and which mature through a fairly long season. These sorts are usually very productive and our most popular varieties generally belong to this type, of which the Stone (Fig. 32) is a good representative of the more compact and the Beauty of the more open growing.
FIG. 32—STONE, AND CHARACTERISTIC FOLIAGE