Nipping out the growing point with the first cluster of flower buds is sometimes practiced to encourage branching and a heavier yield of early fruit. If this is done, ample space and nutrients must accompany careful management. Otherwise, the plant finds itself with inadequate resources to do a big job. Hardening Tomato plants cannot be made frost proof, but low temperature, reduced moisture supply, partial starvation, and crowding all tend to make plants more resistant to cold, to drying winds, to heat, to mechanical injury such as breakage of leaves and stems, and even to cut-worm attacks. Plants can be hardened appreciably in a short time--say a week. It is now generally accepted that moisture control is more useful than reduced temperature as a means of hardening. Starving and crowding are not desirable methods. Plants can be kept on the dry side if glass or other water-shedding cover is available. Great care must be exercised to avoid over-hardening of tomato plants, for in this way a check in growth is incurred from which they recover slowly, and perhaps never fully. Much study has been given to the changes in plants which underlie the hardening process, and papers by Harvey, Rosa, Loomis, and others should be consulted in this connection. [Illustration: FIGURE 14.--Plants that have been crowded and overgrown, probably undernourished and over-hardened. Plants like this are very often set in the field. They are definitely slow in starting growth.] Watts[15] has shown that adverse conditions, especially low temperature and water deficiency prevailing at the time when fruit clusters are barely beginning to form, commonly occasion the development of misshapen fruits. Faithful spraying or dusting with Bordeaux in the plant bed has proved a useful means of forestalling destructive leaf blights which often devastate whole fields. V GOOD CULTURE FAVORS GOOD RETURNS The tomato is not especially exacting as to care after it has been set out-of-doors. It will do business if given half a chance. At the same time, much can be done to favor earliness, good yield and high quality. Time of Planting