In the Garden If onions are once again to be
the scarcest winter vegetable it is a fairly safe bet that tomatoes will be the scarcest of all market produce during the coming summer. At this time in 1940 excellent Canary tomatoes were selling at eightpence a pound ; this year the only tomatoes available are English hot-house at one-and-sixpence each. This is a clear warning, I think, that every gardener should plan to grow at least six times, and if possible ten times, the quantity of tomatoes he grows in a normal year. Even this is not too much. Tomatoes are absurdly easy to raise from seed (an average sixpenny packet should produce about fifty plants) in a temperature of 6o degrees or 65 degrees ; or seedlings (quite commonly sterilised) are already available at eight shillings a hundred. These are, of course, only for those growers who can maintain an indoor tempera- ture of about 65 degrees. But later there is no reason at all why tomatoes should not be grown outdoors, in rows, like beans or potatoes. Fifty per cent. of the fruit of such plants will ripen on the plants, and will be of finer flavour than those grown indoors ; the remaining fifty per cent. may be ripened, in successive batches, in boxes of hay. Handled correctly, they will continue ripening until Christmas. Thus it should be possible for even the most modest grower to produce fruit from July to December. Incidentally more fruit is obtainable by using the twin-stem method of culture—i.e., of allowing two main stems, instead of one, to every plant.
H. E. BATES.
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