In the Garden My recent note on the urgent need
for growing six times et perhaps even ten times more tomatoes than in a normal Year brought a surprising number of requests "not to be silly." These' I noted, came mostly from the trade, which declared elsewhere that it could deal adequately with the situation. I am sure it can—on • much the same principle as the flower-trade is now dealing with, for example, tulips. Imports of tulips having been cut off, home-groll tulips of moderate quality are selling, in moderate shops, for as much as 5s. 6d. a dozen. This gives a fair indication of what maF happen to tomatoes (even if there were not the earlier precedent of leeks and onions). It is clear that the import of tomatoes from France, Holland, Belgium, the Channel Islands, the Canaries and even North Africa, which I believe sent excellent early tomato here, was normally colossal. The tomato trade in England now hopes to extend its season by six weeks—it declared itself unable to compete against foreign imports after mid-August in normal times —but even so I doubt its ability to make up that enormous deficienelt. As always the price—and the effects of any control—will he WW watching. Meanwhile I shall grow six times more tomatoes than last year, including a golden-fleshed variety, which is, by the way' far less liable to disease than the red.
H. E. BOO.
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