The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1901-02-12
TILLINGHAsT's TALKS.

Correspondence of The Progressive Farmer.
Your farm is your bank. The
proper way to increase your capital
is to add to the fertility of your soil
SO as to increase it's productive pow
ers. The better the soil the greater
interest it will pay. And don't ex-
pect to keep checking out without
making equivalent, or greater, de-
posits, or nature will protest.
The chief supply of drink to grow
ing plants is moisture brought up
from below by capillary action, and
therein consists the necessity of pull
verizing the soil thoroughly before
planting, and continuous surface cul-
tivation afterward. Weeds are
sometimes counted as blessing be-
cause their presence compels the
farmer to continue really necessary
cultivation which he might other
wise feel justified in omitting to the
detriment of the crop.
The profit in growing any crop is
the net sum remaining after all the
expenses of producing it have been
paid. It costs about so much per
acre for plowing, narrowing, culti
waiting, harvesting, whatever the
yield, so the man who succeeds in
producing 100 bushels of corn per
acre surely does it at a less cost per
bushel than he who only gets so bush
els. And just think what an amount of
cultivation and fertilization that
second so bushels will pay for. The
top bushel is always the most profit
able.
Producing fine tomatoes is quite
an art and one that it pays the grower
to master if he expects to get much
money out Of the crop. Prof. Massey
say that he formerly entertained the
opinion, still held by some, that
heavy applications of nitrogenous
manures made the vines too rank
and the fruit more crooked but per-
sistent efforts in nimproving the char
acter of the fruit and the modes of
culture have convinced him that
with good strain Of seed no amount
of manuring will make it any more
irregular, while poor strain will be
irregular in any event, and that d
rank growth of vine, induced by
heavy manuring, simply indicates
the need of more room for the plant,
and a heavier crop of big tomatoes,
and that heavy manuring in the hill
is the best way to insure vigorous
growth of vine and a corresponding
vigor and perfection in the fruit. [
have also learned that small fruits
grow from seeds of small fruits, and
vice versa that trimming and train
ing the plant to a single stem lead to
smaller production of blossoms,
less pollen, and a smaller crop; that
the largest crops are always on the
plants which are allowed to take
their full natural development and
grow at their own sweet will on the
ground that healthy tomatoes lying
on the ground are no more liable to
rot than those trained off it. No
fruit is more rapidly improved by
careful selection, and none more
rapidly deteriOrated by carelessness
than the tomato. Like Indian corn,
the tomato is hest when the seed is
produced in the same latitude and
climate where the crop is to be
grown, and it seldom does it's best
the first season when taken far
north or south of it's native locality.
The improvement of the tomato
should therefore carried on in the
locality where the crop is to be
raised.
ISAAC F. TILLINGHAsT.
Wyoming Co., Pa.