Page:How and what to grow in a kitchen garden of one acre (IA howwhattogrowin00darl).pdf/150

 The young plants must be thoroughly cultivated and hoed; when hoeing, the dirt should be loosened right up to the plant, and when it has been worked loose and made fine should be drawn up to the stem, two or three inches in height. It frequently happens, when the season is late, that the plants have grown a foot, or even two feet, in height or length. This is no disadvantage, but rather a help, if treated in the following manner: A gutter two or three inches in depth and nearly the length of the plant, is scraped under the planting line with the hoo, and the plants laid lengthwise in this and covered over, all but about five or six inches of the top, which is bent straight upward and afterward treated as though it were a plant of that size; the long stem underground immediately forms roots and assists in feeding the growth of the plant.

The ground should be well manured, but if the soil is light it can be overdone, as the plant will run too much to vine and be late in producing fruit. I have found that, though there is a general impression that tomatoes do best on a light, sandy soil, the best tomatoes I have ever raised have been on my poorest and heaviest ground. On a plot of ground where the plow turned up the yellow clay at a depth of five or six inches, I have had the ground covered; covered so that you could hardly put your foot down anywhere in the patch without treading on a tomato, and not a cracked or rotten one among them. At another time I planted all the plants there were at that time of the now famous Turner Hybrid, in a patch of clay soil where young nursery trees had been