=For late summer and early fall.=--It is generally true in the South and
often equally so in the North, that there is a more eager local demand
for tomatoes in the late summer and fall months, after most of the
spring set plants have ceased bearing, than in early summer. In Michigan
I have often been able to get more for choice fruit in late October and
in November than the best Floridas were sold for in May or early June,
and certainly in the South the home use of fresh tomatoes should not be
confined to spring set plants. For the fall crop in the South seed may
be sown in late spring or up to the middle of July, in beds shaded with
frames, covered with lath nailed 3 to 4 inches apart and the plants set
in the field about 40 days from sowing, the same care being taken to
put the ground into good condition as is recommended for the spring
planted crop.

A second plan, which has sometimes given most excellent results, is to
cut back spring set plants which have ripened some fruit but which are
not completely exhausted, to mere stubs, and spade up the ground about
them so as to cut most of the roots, water thoroughly and cover the
ground with a mulch of straw. Most of the plants so treated will start a
new and vigorous growth and give most satisfactory returns.

=Fruit at least expenditure of labor.=--When this is the great
desideratum, many growers omit the hotbed and even the pricking out,
sowing the seed as early as they judge the plants will be safe from
frost, and broadcast, either in cold-frames or in uncovered beds, at the
rate of 50 to 150 to the square foot and transplanting directly to the
field. Or they may be advantageously sown in broad drills either by the
use of the pepper-box arrangement suggested on page 60, or a garden
drill adjusted to sow a broad row. In Maryland and the adjoining states,
as well as in some places in the West, most of the plants for crops for
the canners are grown in this way and at a cost of 40 cents or even less
a 1,000. The seed should be sown so that it will be from 1/4 to 1/2 inch
apart and the plants thinned as soon as they are up so that they will be
at least 1/2 inch apart. Where seed is sown early with no provision for
protection from the frost it is always well to make other sowings as
soon as the last begins to break ground in order to furnish reserve
plants, if the earlier sown lots be destroyed by frost. Others even sow
the seed in place in the field, thinning out to a