Читать книгу The Manufacture of Tomato Products - W. G. Hier - Страница 7

Most packers are agreed that the best plant is raised by starting the seeds in rows in hot beds, transplanting to cold frames when they are two to four inches high to harden them and make them stocky, and again transplanting to the field when the plants are six to eight inches high. This method produces a dark green, bushy, thick-stemmed plant of high vitality, which is so essential to a good yield. What a contrast to the average plant raised by the farmer—the seed often broadcasted, either in a hot bed or in a spot in the garden where the soil has not been specially prepared for plant raising, and when the plants, a large number of which are thin, pale green, and spindly looking, attain a height of anywhere from six inches to a foot they are all set out in the field and allowed to struggle along as best they can. When one looks at the kind of plants that are so often set out he can see at least one reason why yields of from three to seven tons per acre are so often obtained from ground which should yield twice that much, and why the plants are easy victims to blight and other diseases.

A prominent canner recently told me that by raising the plants for his farmers he had increased the average yield 4 tons per acre.