TOMATOES.
Your grandmother has told you that in her childhood people grew for mere curiosity a plant that bore red fruits called "love apples." They brought them in when ripe, and set them on the mantelpiece to admire, until a break in the skin, or a soft spot warned of approaching decay. To eat one of these fruits was not thought of. Couldn't one tell by the rank smell of the sappy stems that the plant is poisonous? If any one had dared to taste one of these little red "apples," he would have found it tasteless, full of seeds and thick, green partitions, one or more, separating the interior into compartments. The botanist who named the wild tomato plant must have tasted the fruit, and found it bad enough, for he gave it the Latin name, Lycoper sicum, which means "wolf-peach" — a peach fit only for the meanest of wild beasts, the dread of mankind. He knew the plant belongs to the Nightshade Family, all poisonous, as well as bitter to the taste.
The beauty of its red berries brought the tomato into gardens. Selection of the biggest berries for seed led to the gradual improvement of the species, and the modification of the typical fruit in form, in size, and in color. The earliest toma toes were the cherry, currant, and pear; small fruited varieties resembling the edible fruits for which they were named. Two hundred years ago yellow forms were grown. About the beginning of the nineteenth century certain horticulturists bean the improvement of the tomato as a garden v getable, and through their efforts the host of fine varieties has been developed.
The little cherry variety is worth growing as an ornamental plant, and the cluster-fruited currant tomatoes will cover an unsightly rubbish heap, and make it a thing of beauty along the road. But over the garden wall see the great, smooth "love apples !" The ridged partitions are firm, juicy flesh, and the seeds are scarce and negligible under the thin skin of the best salad fruit in the world If you like variety, there are white tomatoes, yellow ones, pink-cheeked ones, as delicately tinted as any peach. If red is the only color for you,
there are the scarlet and the crimson varieties, and the deep, purplish ones. The Ponderosas weigh two and three pounds, and measure near twenty inches in circumference. Higher quality is found in varieties of smaller size. Early, mid season, and late varieties cover the growing season, furnishing material for the canneries, the pickle factories, and the table. Besides salads, which use the tomatoes raw, either whole or sliced, there are soups, stews, and various made dishes that use them. Stewed or baked tomatoes are delicious. The small varieties are used whole in preserves and marmalades. Ketchups and relishes of other sorts are made for winter use from ripe tomatoes. Green ones are made into similar piquant sauces to serve with meats.
The best tomato region has a long-growing season, warm soil, and abundance of sunshine. The soil needs not be very rich, but it must be moist and well-drained. The stems are flexible, and need staking as soon as they begin to bear fruit. The flowers appear early, in clusters at the joints, the little yellow bells soon followed by the berries, that weigh the branches down, and cause the whole plant to sprawl on the ground unless it is tied up to a stiff support.
Tons of tomatoes are grown in fields of the South for shipment to northern markets before local market gardeners can supply the demand. The price of fresh tomatoes in winter and early spring is high, but gradually goes down as spring brings in the crop from the Carolinas, Virginia, Delaware, and New Jersey, to the New York markets. In the gardens and fields of warm parts of the world, the tomato plants are practically ever-bearing. In colder sections they are sensitive to frost, and are grown as annuals. Tomatoes for Thanks giving Day salads may be had in the North by pulling up the plants and hanging them in the cellar loaded with their green fruits. These will ripen gradually, and so furnish the fruit long after frost has killed the plants outdoors.