News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1884-05-15
FARM AND GARDEN.
Testing Celery, Tomatoes, etc.

The New York Agricultural Expert
ment Station, in bulletin, says: One
of the most popular, perhaps with the
exception of lettuce the most popular,
of salad plants is celery. It is not many
years ago when celery growing was one
of the mysteries of gardening, so far as
current opinion went; and the carefully
grown paintings were transferred to
deep trenches at the bottom of which
much manure had been spaded, while a
laborious process of earthing up was
successfully pursued. Market garden
ers, however, who are usually the first
to Introduce new processes of growing,
on account of the competition they have
to meet, found that the celery grown
upon the surface, and earthed up once
for all at the latter part of the season,
furnished profitable results, and this lat
ter method seems now mainly the one
pursued for commercial purposes. In
the private garden, however, the trench
ing is in many cases continued. and it
therefore seemed to us desirable to know
the comparative merits of these two
methods for if surface planting is equal
in its product to the trench planting, it
is far to be preferred, on account of the
less labor involved.
Our list OF varieties included twenty
named samples. One hundred seeds of
each were planted in boxes April IL and
-, and placed in cold frame, where
they were covered during severe
weather. On July 5 thirty of these
plants We're set in a trench one foot
deep, well MANFRED at the bottom with
thoroughly-rotted horse manure, and
thirty plants were planted adjacent
upon the level without special manur-
ing.
The first data noted was that the
varieties of celery required from twenty
six to twenty-eight days to vegetate
their seeds, and 100 seeds produced,
upon the average, fifty-seven plants, the
variation between varieties being 16 per
cent of vegetation for Seymour's Solid
Red, and 81 per cent. for Giant White
Solid. Averaging our results obtained
in seventeen samples in which the varie-
ties from the two rows are separately
noted, we find that, emitting fractions,
plants grown under level culture aver
aged III pounds per hundred plants,
while those under trench culture aver
aged 178 pounds per hundred plants.
The length of the bleached stems was
rather greater and the suckers were
rather more numerous upon the plants
grown in the trenches; but, on the other
hand, the bases of the stems were more
often split and deformed than occurred
i'll the plants grown upon the level. 1t
appears, therefore, from this trial that
the trench culture yielded no advantage
Cow 10 81 Inro1rol
Our tests with tomatoes include Ga
named samples. One hundred seeds of
each kind were planted in boxes in the
greenhouse April Oil, and the time re-
quired for vegetation was six to nine
days. The number of seeds which veg
etated varied from IA to 100 per cent.
as between the different varieties, the
average being IA per cent. Four plants
of each kind were transferred to the gar
den on May "a. The first bloom was
noted 81 days from planting upon the
Little Gem variety, and the last variety
to bloom was the Improved Large
Yellow, in 104 days from planting. The
first tomato to ripen was of the Green
Gage variety, and was noted July 81, or
112 days from planting. The first large
fruited variety that ripened ten fruits
was the Alpha, 1876 days from planting,
or upon August %; The New Currant,
a very small variety, had ripened ten
fruits on August IS, and the Turks
Cap, another small variety, August %.
The President Garfield, so-called new
variety, failed to ripen any fruit. We
find that the order of ripening of the
varieties does not agree with that noted
last season. Thus, last year, the Acme
was two days later than the Mayfower;
the past season it was seven days earlier.
Last year the Acme was six days earlier
than the Paragon; the past season it was
thirty days earlier. Last year the Acme
and Trophy ripened the same day; the
past season the Acme was seven days
earlier than one sample of the Trophy,
and eleven days earlier than another.
1t is interesting to note that tomatoes
which came up in the garden as weeds
from the last falls seeding seemed to
ripen their fruit at about the same time
with the earlier class as grown by us
from the planting of April Gil.