Maybe you could wrap them in burlap if you can get it cheap.

Helen,

These are the ones I added:

The first batch I added:

Beefmaster
Black and Brown Boar
Black Brandywine
Black Krim
Black From Tula
Black Plum
Bushsteak
Carbon
Cherokee Chocolate
Cherokee Purple
Dr. Wyche's Yellow
Dwarf Mr. Snow
German Giant
Greek Rose
Indian Stripe
Marmande
Michael Pollan
Mosvich
Red Rose
Schiavonne Italian Paste
Spudakee Purple
Spudatula
Super Boy
Woodle Orange

(This group was heavy on pinks, purples and blacks because I felt like I wasn't growing enough of them.)

Then, in the final group that I added, there are these:

Indigo Rose (was going to save it for fall, but decided I couldn't wait that long)
San Marzano Gigante 3
Fantastic
Yellow Submarine
Black Mystery
Orange Minsk
Burgundy Traveler

Then, for the big containers I traditionally plant in February, carrying them inside the garage on cold nights, I purchased these from Home Depot in 5" peat pots and 3" peat pots:

Big Boy
Better Boy
Cherry Chocolate
Red Beefsteak (if this is the same one they sold under this name last year, I think it is the one aka Crimson Cushion or Red Ponderosa, and it had amazing production in a bad year)

Of this last group, three have blossoms though I don't know if they have set any fruit yet, and I am not inclined to go out in the rain to look at them and see.

So, despite my vow to cut back, once I started thinking about how much rain we've had (at least 20" here since September), I decided to go hog wild and plant all I can. This is the first winter we've run out of home-canned salsa in years because I didn't can any last summer. The harvest was good early on so we ate them and gave them away thinking there would be more later on, but then the heat went crazy and that was the end of the good tomato production.

Dawn

soonergrandmom - bury them. I know that could be back breaking to bury that deep, but that is what I would do. Bury them part of the way down, then plant something on the outside of them.

Dawn you are truly the Tomato Baroness. I've basically finished planting tomatoes and peppers. I will plant a few more this weekend. Two varieties that failed to germinate, one twice and a few others for late grafting prospects in case needed. After tonight I will be about 1/4 done grafting. I've had the best germination rates I've ever had. I believe I only had 2 varieties totally fail to germinate out of all I planted. And have over 90% on every tray. Had 100% on all but one rootstock tray. I had 98% on my first full 72 cell tray. Not sure why I experienced such high rates this year. Many of these seeds were 6-8 years old. I'm also going to soak 2 varieties I bought at an auction that were packed in 68 and 69 in the clorox solution I use to see if I can germinate any of them. I've started way more varieties than I will plant out. More hybrids than I've grown for some time. Several new crosses that I was sent. Five different blue types. I'm grafting a wide range of varieties and types. I would be ashamed to post my planted list after seeing yours and Carol's. LOL. Jay

Carol, I often plant trailing plants in large containers that have tomato plants in them and let the trailing plants trail down over the edges of the containers. I generally use either nasturtiums or ornamental sweet potatoes. I use the trailers to shade the sides of the containers to help keep the root zones of the plants cooler.

I liked Helen's suggestion of burlap too. Sometimes I'll see rolls of burlap in some nurseries and garden centers. This year I am cutting open Tomato Tone and Purina Chicken Feed bags and "wrapping" most of the cat litter buckets with them, using yellow or red duck tape as a border to attach the bag to the top and bottom of the bucket. I do not yet know how it will look or how long it will hold up, but it will be more attractive than Tidy Cat buckets.

I have had mixed results with painting the buckets and some flower pots with Fusion spray paint for plastic. It seemed to hold up the first couple of years pretty well, but they were dry years. Either the paint formula has changed or something because with the ones I've painted the last couple of years, the paint hasn't adhered to the plastic very well and washes off over time. So, I think I'm through using the Fusion paint.

Jay, I fear I have lost my mind. Tomato madness. lol I don't know how you have time to do all that grafting. You know what---it has been a magical year here for tomatoes from seeds too. Great germination rates. Fast germination times. Great growing---very speedy and very healthy. Maybe all this is an omen that it is going to be a great tomato year?

Do you mean you bought tomato seeds that were packed in 1968 and 1969? What varieties? Maybe they are some varieties that our parents were growing back then! Isn't that something to think about?

Come hell or high water, as my dad used to say, I am going to have enough tomatoes to make lots of salsa this year. If not, I swear I will buy (gasp! yes I will!) enough paste tomatoes at the store or farmer's market to make Annie's Salsa. We are severely homemade-salsa-deprived this year and it is tragic to have to eat store-bought salsa.

I can't wait to see how your grafted varieties do this year! I am so caught up on garden chores for once that I am not worried about how I'll find time to get everything done "on time". It only rained a little here, and they've dropped our rain chances for tomorrow to 20%. We're supposed to have rain on Saturday and Sunday, so I guess I'll have to resort to doing something dull like laundry and housework. I'd rather be out in the garden.

Dawn

I left one off the list:

Medovaya Kaplya

YOU GUYS ARE KILLING ME!!!

Chandra - WAIT UP!!!! On that list of yours - the last one - the "PKM-1"....it has my name on it, literally!!! Do you have an extra or could you start one for me??? Please, please, pretty please????

And Dawn - I'm going to have several "paste" types extra if you are in need (Opalka and Rio Grande).

I know Jay & Dawn are the Tomatoe King & Queen, but I'm so excited that I have both pepper and tomatoe seedlings with REAL leaves already! Yea for the Rookie!

Paula

Paula,
I am glad you noticed it. Yes I have lot of "PKM-1" seeds and also started couple of seedlings for you! -Chandra

I saw a role of burlap in Arkansas the other day. It was on a display rack with the rolls of floating row cover and frost blankets. I may have to go back and look at that.

It isn't that they are so ugly, it just that they are different. I got the lightest colors, so they are beige, brown, grey, etc. I had not thought of trailing plants, but that would work because there is room for a lot of roots in this size container.

Thanks folks, you have given me another idea as well. I like brainstorming. LOL

Paula, Hooray for true leaves!

Thanks for the offer of plants, but I think I'll be OK. I think I have about a dozen different kinds of paste tomatoes or canning tomatoes planted. The real issue will be finding room for all of them, but then that is an issue every year.

Carol, That's one of the things I love about big containers---you can put something else in there with the tomatoes without having to worry about the roots competing for space.

We can brainstorm all day long when it is raining, and then we have too many ideas we want to try and not enough time to try them all when it is sunny.

Dawn

And I was thinking I overdid it with a minimum of 30 tomato plants! haha I'll be lucky to get mine to set before the heat. We shall see!

I have to add one more variety that I've planted in the garden, but I didn't raise it from seed.

Maybe this is the last tomato variety I'll add to this list.

It is:

Merced

I have 2 of these plants, and have no idea if they were grown by someone who bought up a huge supply of Merced seed before it was dropped from production or if someone has dehybridized it and is saving seed every year.

Jay, If you see this, wouldn't Gone Fishin' be proud I tracked down some Merced plants? It is a variety he really liked.

I don't necessarily like it as much as he did, but it produces well in July and August. I am planting it and Phoenix F-1 side by side so I can see how they compare. I want a good heat-setter that won't mind if we stay in the 100s for a couple of months. (I know, I know....dream on....)

Dawn

I am planning on these: Sioux, Tommy Toes, Cherokee Purple, Yellow 1884 Pinkheart, Royal Hillbilly, and maybe either Grandma Suzy's beefsteak or Brandy Boy if I can get a plant.

Sioux produced pretty well for me in the heat last year, but I hope it's not that bad again this year. Everything else I grew made just a few tomatoes that got eaten by caterpillars before I picked them. The plants looked great until that heat hit, they were enormous, just not much fruit.

Julie, Last year was a horrible year because of the weather. The heat makes it even more complicated because it seems like pests arrive earlier and just thrive in the hotter weather. Surely this year will be better. It just has to be.

Spider mites, grasshoppers and blister beetles all arrived about 3 months ahead of "schedule" at our house last year and I just hated seeing them that early.

Sioux always has set well for me in heat.

For the best chance of getting good fruitset on your tomato plants, get them in the ground as early as you reasonably can without subjecting them to temperatures dangerously close to freezing. Once the daytime highs are exceeding 95 degrees and the nighttime lows are exceeding roughly 72-75 degrees, fruitset on tomato plants decreases greatly. In general, the larger the size of the fruit, the worse the heat affects a variety. Most plants that produce bite-sized tomatoes are barely affected by heat in the average summer, though a lot of them were affected last year.

Last year, I had huge amounts of fruit from the first couple of rows of tomatoes that I had in the ground right around the earliest recommended tomato planting date of April 10th. After that, I noticed the later a plant went into the ground, the poorer its fruitset.

This year, to beat the heat, I put 8 plants into containers in late February. Four of those plants still are in containers, are waist-high and have fruit and flowers. The other 4 are in the ground and are not quite as large, but also have fruit and flowers. I expect the earliest fruit I harvest will be from those 8 plants. The rest of my tomatoes will be in the ground by the end of today. Then, after that, all I have to do is plant the ones that are strictly for containers into those containers. Normally I plant the containers first, but the early onset of warm weather has me doing things backwards this year. I've never had all the in-ground plants done before starting on the containers (except those February-planted containers) before. It seems odd.

Dawn

I've purposely avoided this thread until now. I simply am not strong enough to read through all of the yummy varieties and resist finding seed & starting half of those.

But, now, I've got all of my seeds started and growing so I should be safe. It's far too late to start more seeds. Right? Right?!

Here's what I've started in the tomato department this year:

Absinthe
Ace 55
Arkansas Traveler
Aunt Gertie�s Gold
Aunt Ruby�s German Green
Azoychka
Banana Legs
Beefsteak
Black Brandywine
Black Cherry
Black from Tula
Black Krim
Black & Red Boar
Black Sea Man
Blue Streak
Box Car Willie
Bradley
Break O� Day
Burning Spear
Campbell�s 1327
Chapman
Cherokee Purple
Chocolate Cherry
Cowlick�s Brandywine
Crimson Cushion
Cuostralee
Dana�s Dusky Rose
Dix Doights de Naples
Dora
Dr. Wyche�s Yellow
Earl�s Faux
Egg Yolk Cherry
Ernesto
Estler�s Mortgage Lifter
Eva Purple Ball
Galina�s Yellow Cherry
Gary�O Sena
German
German Johnson
German Red Strawberry
Goji Faranji
Golden Jubilee
Granny Cantrell
Great White
Heart�s Delite Black
Hillbilly
Hoy
Indian Stripe
Isis Candy cherry
JD�s Special C-Tex
Japanese Trifele Black
Juane Flammee
KBX
Kang Bing
Kardinal Tshyornyi
Kellogg�s Breakfast
Livingston�s Paragon
Ludmilla�s Red Plum
Marianna�s Peace
Matt�s Wild Cherry
Nepal
New Big Dwarf
New Yorker
NOT German
OSU Blue
Out of the Blue Cherry
Pink Floyd
Pruden�s Purple
Prue
Red House Free Standing
Rose
Tasmanian Chocolate
Tigerella
Tommy Toes Cherry
Hawaiian currant
Peacevine Cherry
San Marzano Redorta
Sandul Moldovan
Snow White Cherry
Speckled Roman
Sungold
Tess� Landrace currant
Wes
White Princess
Wisconsin 55
Woodle Orange

In addition to those 80-90 varieties, I also have a couple hundred seedlings from my beginning landrace which includes even more varieties. I'm hoping to squeeze in at least one or two of everything above plus a chunk from the landrace... somewhere.

At least my pepper lists are smaller this year. Um, I think.

Diane

Dawn I posted a reply earlier and it acted like it was posted. Now don't see it.
Yes he would be. I grew it most years. Was growing it before I ever found the forums. I didn't consider it a great tomato but was almost a for sure producer. Much like 4th of July and Goliath. All 3 hybrids that seem to tolerate the elements here, produce well and with decent flavor. I knew several people were attempting to stabilize it. Tom Wagner supposedly has done some work with it. Understand he took it to the F5 stage or so and it was fairly stable and then has used it for crossing. I knew of at least one person who received some seeds from him. I heard he has a nice cross that is better but who knows if and when he might release it. I see a man in LA is advertising Merced plants for sale. He says they are F1. I also read once where they were considering reintroducing it like Ramapo. But never heard anything again.

I'm still chugging away with my garden along with handling some other issues. After seeing all these impressive lists it makes me wonder whether I should even bother putting my bland list or boys,girls and a few others in the ground. LOL. I didn't plant Early Girl this year. Hadn't in several then planted it as a replacement after the hail last year. I did plant Early Doll and New Girl. Both supposedly Early Girl improvements. Early Doll has been impressive so far. Very vigorous and will be in blooming by next weekend. Will have a report on it as the season progresses. Overall it has went well. I have several large plants that will have to go in the ground or in larger pots next weekend. The earliest ones have fruit on them. I did set one tray back and then killed a few in it due more to my lack of attention with another potting soil. But I already have more plants 10 inches or taller than I can ever plant. I have noticed with the shade cover pulled over the lean to the plants are a little taller than my plants are normally. But don't think with the heat I dare remove it or even go to a lower percentage of shade cloth. And they are fine just not as stocky. Trying my last effort at grafting for the year probably. Have plants in 3 different trays/domes healing off now. Hopefully I have figured out some of my pitfalls and can save a few more this time. I have 2 that have healed and been back under the lights and now in the lean to. They are catching up fast to the other plants. Jay

Hi Dawn, thanks I am going to try to buy my plants and get them in the ground next weekend, that's the first weekend my tomato place will be open for sales. Last year I planted in mid-April and then it got all cold and rainy for a few weeks--I don't think the earliness helped me any since they had to bounce back from the cold.

But this year it is so freakishly warm, I think I will risk it anyway.

Here's my list for this year. It's pretty small compared to most of the ones here, but there are lots of things I like more than tomatoes, so those get the space.

01. Sun gold
02. Black Cherry
03. 4th of July
04. Rutgers Select
05. San Marzano Redorta
06. Heidi

I have one of each planted, but I have room for three more. I think I'll plant another Sungold and another 4th of July, but I don't know what to plant for the third. If you all had to pick, would you choose Rutgers Select, San Marzano Redorta, or Heidi?

Leslie

Your tomato lists blow me away! Dawn, your list has 21 varieties for containers. In other posts, I read that you plant potatoes and/or sweet potatoes in containers too. Anything else?

What kind of containers and where do you get them?

Bird and Owie - your tomato lists are HUGE! How many plants do you grow? In rows? How many feet of rows? I just can't wrap my brain what I'm reading here.

I live on 5.5 acres on the Chesapeake Bay in southeastern Virginia. I found the OK forum by great good luck - was looking for info about growing sweet potatoes, found links here, was so impressed by the great advice and encouragement y'all gave each other. I am still working on my sweet potato list - I haven't grown sweets before, love them, and based on info I read here, I contacted Gary at Duck Creek Farm.

I always bite off more than I can chew so am trying to exercise more restraint and self discipline this year. I think I'll put my sweet potato list on the wall, and make choices by throwing darts at the list.

My parents lived in OK during WWII - my dad was in the Army Air Corp, taught people to fly at a place called Cimarron Field. I think I'll adopt Oklahoma and visit this forum a lot more often.

Pam

Welcome, Pam! My husband's family are all from Virginia and North Carolina (Fredericksburg, VA, Currituck, NC, and Clinton, NC). Love it out there.

My list is quite small. I'm in Norman and growing all in containers this year (unless I get a wild hair and decide to throw some in the ground in the coming weeks...totally possible). I planted a large garden with my parents at their house in Garvin County last year, but with the lack of rain and the wildfires that threatened their home more than a couple of times over the summer the whole thing just fried. They got a few tomatoes toward the end of the season, but our efforts were mostly wasted.

This year I am growing the following:

Black Krim
Black Prince
Cherokee Purple (2)
Mortgage Lifter
Mr. Stripey

And one other that I have no clue about. It looked like it needed rescuing from the garden center and I got home without any label. Some little cherry variety that's got fruit already.

All the ones that I have planted are new for me except Cherokee Purple (favorite) and Mortgage Lifter. How have the others faired for you around here?

Tomatoes are my favorites, by far, and I'd like to plant more (and do most years). Yeah, I may end up planting a few more before it's all said and done :)

I'm not starting my own from seed, but today went to Atwood's in Norman and found a pretty good selection. I took Dawn's list with me, hoping that I could find some of those shorter DTM varieties in case we have a repeat of the heat this summer. One of the ones I came home with is Independence Day. It's described as 49 days to maturity and sounds exactly like Fourth of July. I googled it and it does appear to be the same thing - does anyone know anything about it? I tried to get something from every category except containers. I bought Celebrity, Black Cherry, Early Girl, Arkansas Traveler, Cherokee Purple, Green Zebra, and Lemon Boy.

Suzie

All of my tomato seedlings died, and the new ones I started are still too small, so I picked up a Black Cherry and an Early Girl and planted them about a week ago. So far they are doing well. I have room for at least two more, which I will probably pick up this week. Trying to decide which varieties to plant. I was thinking maybe a grape variety and something for sauce. Any recommendations? Is Sioux a sauce type tomato?

okielizabeth: Thanks for taking the time to welcome me. We live in a village called Deltaville about two hrs southeast of Fredericksburg. Most folks farm, work the water, or both.

I have friends in OK so I keep an eye on your weather. Last summer was cruel! I don't know how ya'll kept anything alive.

This year, I'm late getting seeds started. Here is my tomato list so far -

Red Brandywine
Yellow Brandywine
Kelloggs Breakfast
Cherokee Purple
Stupice
Chuda Rinka
Better Boy
Sungold
Dr. Carolyn
Amish Paste
San Marzano la Padino
Principe Borghese

I think you're right - we'll both plant more before it's all said and done.

We have a long growing season so I often start a fall crop in late July-early August. Depends on the weather. ;-)

Take care,
Pam

Diane,

Wowowowowow, (y'all that's wow oh wow oh wow, lol). Great list!

So, where's the pepper list? You know that enquiring minds want to know.

Jay, I always considered Merced a sort of ho-hum-yes-it-will-produce-in-heat-but-what-about-flavor type of tomato, but Bill really drove home to me the point that even if Merced wasn't dazzling in flavor, it still beat grocery store tomatoes and he was right. So, here I am growing it again, and thinking of him as I do so.

If you want seeds of Ramapo, go to the website linked below. I bought seed the first year they re-released it and grew it for 3 or 4 years. I don't think I have any seed left, or I'd pop it into an envelope and mail it to you. It is really good, but not any more special than something like Supersonic or Jetstar. Well, the fruit were larger, but you know what I mean. I thought maybe they'd take it all the way commercial and we'd see seeds from someplace like Harris (like that did with Moreton) or TGSC but so far that just has not happened.

Like you, I have oodles of plants growing too fast and blooming while still in their little pots in the greenhouse. Last week's 4 days spent at fire training just killed my gardening, so this week I'll be planting like an insane lunatic if my wet northside of the garden dried up enough today. I think I could grow rice or watercress in it right now.

Leslie, In your climate, I'd plant Heidi. The hotter it gets, the more it fruits. I love it, love it, love it! Need proof? I have 18 of them in the ground, including an area where I originally planned to put heirloom slicers. Once I started planting Heidi, I couldn't stop, and I still have a handful of backup Heidi plants in the greenhouse just in case a weather disaster occurs.

Hi Pam, Welcome to the forum! I grow oodles of stuff in containers, but mostly put potatoes in the ground. I just don't get great results from potatoes or sweet potatoes in pots.

I have containers in a multitude of sizes, from 5 to 20 gallons or larger. The largest containers I use hold 20 gallons or more and are molasses cattle feed tubs. They hold 200 lbs. of feed, I think, and most ranchers have more of them than they know what to do with. I already had 8 or 10 of them, and then a rancher friend gave me 36 more last week.

I like containers because I have horrible red clay soil that takes forever to amend. Using containers allows me to plant more without having to break and amend a lot more red clay.

I'm glad you contacted Gary at Duck Creek Farms. His plants are awesome---they are perfectly healthy and a nice size.

This may be the wrong forum to visit if you're looking for people who exercise restraint and self-discipline. We always talk about cutting back how much we grow but we never do it. My goal for this year is 140 plants in the ground and another 30 or so in containers. We can, dehydrate, freeze and give away a lot of tomatoes.

My dad did some sort of military training in OK too during WWII, but by the time we moved here from Texas, his Alzheimer's was so far advanced that he couldn't tell me much about his years here, although he said he was based someplace close to Norman.

I do hope you'll visit often. I imagine your climate is a lot like ours, though you likely have worse summer himidity. In a dry year, our humidity can get pretty low, though it can be really high in a wet summer.

Okielizabeth, Black Krim and Cherokee Purple are two favorites of mine, and both do well here. Black Prince is only so-so for me, but Mortgage Lifter is another favorite, and was one of the first heirloom tomato varieties I ever planted. Some years it seems like it takes Mortgage Lifter forever to start setting fruit but then it does continue setting well late into the season. When I grew Mr. Stripey, it was nothing special.

If you like Cherokee Purple, you might want to try the very similar Indian Stripe, which produces better for me and tastes very similar.

Shelley, I'm sorry to hear your tomato seedlings died. For a paste tomato, you cannot go wrong with San Marzano or Viva Italia. For grape, I like the red one simply labeled "Grape". I generally don't use Sioux for sauce, but you can use any tomato for sauce. The ones with a higher water level just have to be cooked down bit longer.

Pam, Our first freeze can come early here some years but not others. I like to plant at mid-summer for fall production. Our average first autumn freeze generally occurs around Thanksgiving, but every now and then it comes as late as mid-December.

If it wasn't for the weather, gardening would be a breeze, wouldn't it?

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Ramapo at NJAES

Hi Dawn:

Thanks for the warm welcome. As I read more posts in this forum, I understand your comment about this not being a group who exercises discipline and restraint! If you love to grow stuff, and I do, it can be an obsession.

My husband and I travel in our work so may be away from home for a few days to a couple of weeks. I have planted out seedlings by the light of a headlamp because they wouldn't survive until we came back from a trip. No fun.

Yes, our climate is similar although I'm sure were are more humid. Because we live on the Bay, our soil is sandy and acidic. Wind is a huge problem so I'm always looking for easier, more effective ways to create windbreaks. Flooding during tropical storms can also be a big problem.

I'll continue to read posts - so much good advice here.

Take care,
Pam

Pam, I'll only end up with maybe 200 in the ground -- if I'm lucky. If I'm not lucky, I'll have to survive with only 150 or so. I'm growing a few dwarves this year to test out pot growing here. Er, growing in pots. In OK, I grew in pots as little as possible because it was just too stinking hot & dry. Being more moderate here in NE MO, I'm hoping pots will do better so I have an excuse to plant more. :-P

I have... 250-275' of row in my Tomato Henge, if I remember correctly (and I'm sure I'm not). Other than that, I squeeze a few in here, a few in there, and convince the kids to let me take over every ounce of spare space in their beds as well. It's not difficult since they're all tomato freaks like me.

Dawn, I briefly considered planting the entire front lawn with Tess LR. Can you imagine the jungle fun the kids could have?? (And I wouldn't have to mow...) I do think, maybe next year after we have the goats & fencing settled, that I'll grow a maze/fort from Tess in the front.

Diane

Pam, I haven't planted by headlamp but have planted by flashlight or by car headlights. So, I believe we are kindred spirits. You'll find many others here just like us.

Diane, Please oh please, if you have a chance, post "those photos" (or a link to your blog page containing them) of your kids with Tess's for Pam to see. A person cannot believe the monster Tess's can be until they see the plant about to swallow up your children. : )

I think a Tess's Land Race Currant maze or henge would be great, but it would drive me stark raving mad to try to pick all those tiny little tomatoes from all those plants. Who needs a lawn anyway?

Dawn

Yeh, but Dawn, Diane she has plenty of kids to help pick those little tomatoes. Actually, I can see Diane doing that to her lawn. LOL

It is a win-win situation. If the kids eat as many currant tomatoes while picking them as I do (you know, there's one for me, one for the bucket, two for me, one for the bucket, three for me, one for the bucket....), Diane won't even have to cook dinner.

I expect to see a TomatoHenge TomatoMaze take over Owie's yard next year. Or, maybe the tomatoes will be planted in a circular spiral like a labyrinth. That would keep the kids busy!

As long as it takes to pick a Tess vine, the first one would be ready to pick again by the time they worked there way around the spiral.

And what's with my writing tonight. 'Diane' and 'she', pick one. Gee, I really am tired.

My mother and I are determined to start a garden this year. I've not managed to keep one single plant alive on purpose in 29 years of life! However, I've never given it a lot of research and effort, so I'm starting now. I'm the most excited to plant tomatoes. At the recommendation of a gardening friend, I purchased Homestead and Solar Fire plants, and I'll be hardening them this week while we get our gardening boxes ready. I also grabbed a Rutgers that was there. My mom is wanting "organic" type of plants, so we've been looking for heirloom varieties. I'm clueless on that whole debate. If you could only plant 3 tomato varieties, which would you choose? :) I'm thinking this might be an impossible question for those of you who can't narrow it down to 30, but could you try? =D What tastes great that is hard to kill? So far, from researching the ones I bought, it doesn't look like they'll be the best tasting. So I'd like to add a couple that are. Thanks so much if you can help.

@mommyrosalynn, it doesn't really matter what tomato variety you grow...they will all taste far better than those red things they call tomatoes at the grocery store. The heirloom varieties produce some tasty tomatoes, but don't usually produce as much fruit as hybrids and easily succumb to disease/pests. If I could only plant 3, which ones would it be? Ugh, that is such a difficult and subjective question. I would want some that would produce well, but still taste good. For slicing, I suppose I would plant Celebrity and one of the "boy" varieties (Big Boy, Better Boy, etc.). I would absolutely have to plant a cherry type...preferably Sungold. Despite our unpredictable weather, I can almost guarantee I'll at least have some cherry tomatoes. They seem to produce no matter what and can withstand diseases and pests right on through to the first frost. All are hybrids.

I am totally convinced that grocery store tomatos should only be used at the dunking booth at the carnival.

Dawn, now you have me rethinking the planting of Black Prince. I may just go back and get Black Krim instead. Does BK get as large as Black Prince? I read somewhere that BP can get humongous.

Susan

Dawn, that endorsement of Heidi makes me want to plant more than just the one extra! I had originally planned to put it in a container because it was listed as determinate, but then I saw it listed as indeterminate, so I figured I should plant it in the ground to be safe. I'm still not sure what it is, so I may do another in a container anyway to see how it fares.

Mommyrosalynn, I don't really have 3 must have varieties yet, so I'm not the best person to answer, but Sungold is definitely on the list. You may have trouble finding plants unless you order online, though. I don't think I've ever seen it in stores. But I'd bet someone here is bringing one/many to the Spring Fling, if you're going.

Leslie

Mommyrosalyn first I want to say taste preference is different for each persona and also the flavor of a variety can vary due to soil, environmental and gardening practices. Kellogg's Breakfast is a prime example. For best taste you need low temps in the mid 50's and above and either good draining soil or water only enough to keep the plant going. Although I end up trialing several new to me varieties every year I also grow several of the same varieties every year. I hardly ever just grow a variety for good taste. It must also produce well and prove itself to withstand my conditions. With that being said what does well for me may not for you. Cherokee Purple is one that does well for me and has what I consider very good flavor. Indian Stripe thought by some to be related doesn't produce near as well for me. And to me personally if you grow the original Cherokee Purple strain it has better flavor. But I know Dawn says that her results are opposite. That Indian Stripe produces better for her. Of the darks that you might find available to buy Black from Tula and Carbon does well normally for me. Not knowing where you are located it is hard to know what you might be able to find to buy. If in the Tulsa area you have some more choices than many do. Two of top performers last year were Randy's Brandy and Grandma Suzy's both from that area and I know Duckcreek Farms and also the Tomato Man's Daughter sells them along with Royal Hillbilly another good one. The one hybrid I recommend any grower around here grow is 4th/Fourth of July. Not a large tomato but will almost always produce well and has good disease resistance. Of the more popular hybrids you can find I suggest Jetstar to me better flavor than any of the Boys and again a very dependable producer for me. If you could find a Brandyboy F1 plant at a farmers market or somewhere it is very good also. Personally I'm not a Boy fan but due to a hail out last summer I planted some and it was a terrible year but they didn't produce well for me again and the flavor is very average. Big Beef is one that I plant sometimes that should be readily available. It produces well, has good disease tolerance and better flavor than many of the hybrids. Besides the hybrids I've mentioned the others to produce decent last year were Beefy Boy and Talladega. There are several threads on this forum where each of us has posted our preferences. In the end as stated above any home grown tomato is better than a store bought one.

I forgot to comment on cherry types. Most really like Sungold. It is good but I have splitting issues with it. I do grow it every few years and still trying to find a cross/stabilized version that compares. I'm growing a couple now and one of them I felt last summer was very comparable but you won't find it available anywhere. One hybrid I see available around here that does well for me that I grow every year is Sweet Treats. It outproduces Sungold here after I throw away the splitters. Not hardly as good of flavor as Sungold but a flavor I still like and set right through the heat of last summer.

Dawn I may have to try Heidi again sometime. Sure I still have seeds for it. Only grew it once and can't remember why it didn't impress me. Maybe it was the year. Jay

Diane -What is a Tomato Henge? I'd love to see photos - and that goes for all of you. Maybe start another thread since this one is pretty long.

Dawn: If you get a headlamp, look for one by Rayovac that has a red light, in addition to white and yellow. The red light works great at night because it doesn't mess up your night vision. We use headlamps with red lights when we go fishing or sailing at night. When you use the red light, the batteries last for weeks.

Owie: How do you support 150-200 tomatoes? What do you do with them? I can't wrap my brain around the idea of one person growing and processing so many tomatoes - and there's all the other stuff.

In 2010, I planted 75-80 tomatoes grown from seed in what was supposed to be the community garden. Several neighbors wanted gardens but didn't have room. We have 5.5 acres, mostly open field, so I offered a big chunk for everyone to use as a community garden. DH and I cleared the land, tilled it. We fenced it in. (Doing all that work was our first mistake)

The neighbors came a couple of times, but faded as the temps got hotter. The "community garden" became Pam's garden. That year, we had drought - D2 /D3 and record high temps for weeks. Sound familiar? To keep the toms alive, I bought soaker hoses and ran them every day. Sometimes twice a day.

Had lots of toms and lots of weeds because of the tilling. Little ones like Principe Borghese produced 1000s of tiny tomatoes. The big ones failed to thrive. The community garden was a disaster. I was burned out and gun-shy about planting more than DH and I can use. (our kids are grown and live a few hours away) Extra stuff goes to the office or the food bank.

I'd love to plant more varieties if I could care for them properly, so that brings me to the first question. How do ya'll support and care for so many?

Pam I'm not Owie or Dawn but will speak for myself. I'm single so everything that gets done around here I do myself. I've grown over 100 plants many years. Last year 85 and this year was shooting for 65 but imagine I will run over some. Depending on the amount I put in containers I may reach 85 or so again. My area is semi arid naturally and has been in a 4 year drought cycle. We just got lowered from a Class D4 drought area to D3. Fortunately we have been receiving some moisture. Here I mulch heavily and blessed with deep sandy loam soil that drains well but still retains moisture well. Even during the extreme heat and hot dry winds of last summer I could go 3 days without watering. The deep mulch controls 90% of the weeds. I also grow many other veggies. I will plant 40-50 pepper plants mainly chile types also. I imagine the issues and even the weed pressure I see is totally different than you see. I mulch shortly after I put my tomato plants out. In fact in areas where I put WOW's or plastic buckets with the bottoms cut out I'll mulch around them as soon as I put them out. This stops the germination of most weeds. On the bare ground where sow crops like beans, okra, ect I mulch it as son as possible and cultivate it with either a hand plow, the Mantis or the Troy Bilt I bought and then hand weed around the plants. My main garden area including 3 patches would be over 6,000 sq ft. I have some smaller areas and also asparagus and horseradish beds not figured into that. I cage between 40-50 plants every year and anything over that is left to sprawl on a bed of mulch. Jay

mommyrosalyn, As Tulsastorm already said, many heirlooms do not produce as heavily as hybrids, so if I had a very limited number of plants, I am not sure I'd plant an heirloom if I wanted a lot of tomatoes.

If I could plant only one, I'd plant Reisentraube which is an heirloom cherry type that produces large red cherry tomatoes that have the traditional flavor found in large slicing tomatoes, not the extra-sweet flavor of most cherry tomatoes. For a full-sized heirloom, I'd plant Neve's Azorean Red but I don't know if you'll find that anywhere in Oklahoma. The Tomatoman's Daughter might have it in NE OK. If I wanted a paste type for salsa or pasta sauce, I'd plant San Marzano Redorta. My favorite cherry is Black Cherry but I also love SunGold, which is not an heirloom.

Celebrity is a great producer with moderately good flavor and it is almost impossible to kill. It is a hybrid, and my favorite hybrid is Big Beef which is a lot like Big Boy and Better Boy but produces more fruit with what I feel is better flavor. I also like Ramapo, Primetime, Jetstar and Supersonic hybrid varieties.

Another couple of really good heirlooms are Mortgage Lifter, Pruden's Purple and Bradley Pink.

The reason many of us grow so many is that the flavor of heirloom tomatoes in particular is like the flavor of wine---each variety has its own specific flavor notes and nuances just like wine vintages are very different. It gets really complicated because every person's taste buds perceive flavor differently. You might like the flavor of one variety and I might not or vice versa. Soil is one thing believed to influence flavor as is weather.

Susan, BP certainly is not humongous at all. I have grown it several times and its fruit is in the 2 to 4 oz. range at best. Black Krim produces fruit in about the 10 to 14 oz. range. They seem bigger earlier in the year and smaller as the heat builds and available moisture drops. The blacks I've grown that produce huge tomatoes are Chocolate Stripes and Black Brandywine.

Leslie, I just love Heidi because it produces its head off for me. It is a determinate but in years with good moisture it can get pretty tall for a determinate. Some people describe it as a semi-determinate, which I think probably is true.

Any time you have a question about any heirloom variety, you can go to Tatiana's Tomatobase and check her listed info. She strives to provide accurate data and has thousands of tomatoes listed. Well, I have not counted, but I am sure there are thousands. I've linked her Heidi entry below.

Jay, SunSugar doesn't split for me and I cannot tell it from SunGold when I grow them side by side. For some reason though, I like SunGold better so I always plant it. I think if I had a bowl of the fruit mixed together, I couldn't tell one from the other as I ate them.

Heidi is great for salsa and sauce. It is one of the few paste tomatoes that can produce more tomatoes than I care to can most years and I sometimes leave them for the birds. One year I made the mistake of planting Heidi, Heinz 1439, Santa Clara Canner and San Marzano Redorta all in the same year and we had canning tomatoes coming out of our ears. It was the same year the peaches and plums went bonkers and I learned it is physically possible to harvest and can for 18 hours a day if you have to. : ) I think that was 2010.

Pam, I have a fairly new policy of always being in out of the garden before dark. I used to work after dark a lot in the garden several years ago but after large predators visited my garden in broad daylight a couple of years ago while I was in it or leaving it, I found it hard enough to return to the garden in daylight, much less after dark. If I am not inside before dark my family comes outside to drag me in, or they call me from work and say "it is dark, are you inside"....or at least they come out to see if anything is stalking me out there. I am in a really wild area that's crawling with snakes at night, so that alone discourages me from night gardening 99.9% of the time.

We do use after-market headlamps on our fire helmets, so I'm pretty familiar with them and I like them but since I tend to come in before dark, I don't really need one for the garden any more.

To raise a large amount of tomatoes, I employ a lot of techniques that allow me to work smarter, not harder. After the ground is ready, I lay down a very heavy duty woven landscape fabric which is pinned to the ground with U-shaped landscape pins. I cut holes in the fabric, plant through the hole, stake each tomato with a labeled stake, cage the tomato, stake the cage, and put 2 to 4" of mulch down on top of the fabric. Then, drip irrigation line is run down each row. It takes me a while to do all the planting/support/dripline stuff, but once it is in place, I can just harvest and weed if anything is popping up in the mulch. It certainly isn't maintenance-free, but is as low-maintenance as I can make it. So, while my tomato growing is labor intensive at planting time, it is pretty easy after that, which is good because that leaves me free to harvest and can, dehydrate, etc. all summer long. I do use woven wire cages, and have accumulated about 400 of them over the years, although I've also given away some of those to neighbors in recent years because, believe it or not, I grow fewer tomato plants now than I did in the early thru mid-2000s. The most I've ever grown in one year was 400 plants and I did it so I could trial a great many varieties--about 150 of them--in one year side by side. That was way too many plants. It seemed like all I did that year was pick tomatoes and give them away. The next couple of years I cut back and back and back and now I usually plant 150 but I am shooting for 200 plants this year because in last year's D4 drought I canned nothing. The year before, I canned around 700 jars of fruit, tomatoes, peppers and pickles. I normally freeze beans, corn and the like. We consider it a bad year if I don't put up at least 100 jars of salsa ebcause we like to give them as gifts.

I mulch everything and I add more and more mulch as the weather heats up. I am very fortunate to have lovely ranching and farming neighbors who tolerate my gardening obsession and feed the obsession by giving me hay and manure. I use the manure in the compost pile and the hay as mulch. Last year our friends gave us 206 bales of old hay, so my mulching needs for this year are covered.

Every square inch of my garden gets mulched--pathways included, and this year I am mulching a 6' wide area outside and along the garden fence to try to keep the pasture grasses from invading. They are my biggest problem.

It seems like I never stop mulching, but I'd rather mulch than weed.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Heidi at Tatiana's T

Dawn I'm not sure I've grown Sun Sugar or not. I just went back and looked at my 09 lists. I started it and Sun Gold Select and for some reason planted SGS instead of SS. Not sure for the reason. I've grown several Sun Gold selections from grow outs and a couple of crosses. I'm growing Ambrosia Gold this year. It is a cross. And some growers who I respect their opinions say it is the best of the Sun Gold efforts they've tasted. And at least one likes it as good or better than Sun Gold. They say a little sweeter on brix levels. But one said it didn't appear to be stable and the others felt it was. So time will tell. I lost the plant I had growing last year to the hail. The Ambrosia Red which is a cross with one of the same parents was very good. So have hopes for this cross. I didn't grow any of the Wild Boar Farms varieties last year. Was sent seeds of Solar Flare to try. I already have more tomatoes potted up than I can grow this year but will add Heidi tot he list for next year. I'm trying Cody's Paste that Gary sent me seeds for also. Jay

Oops, sorry, Dawn, I was referring to the size of the plant, not the tomatos. I knew Black Prince was a smaller tomato than BK. I had heard that the vines of BP get much larger than BK. True, or not true?

Jay, I am trying Sun Sugar this year as well as Sungold. This is driving me nuts - are these names written as Sun Sugar and Sun Gold, or Sunsugar and Sungold??? Sorry to be so anal.

Susan

Plant size is highly variable depending on soil, water, temperatures, etc. but for me Black Prince plants never have been all that big. It is a typical indeterminate that gets maybe 5' or 5.5' tall, but not a tall indeterminate like Sweet Million or Jetstar for comparison's sake, and it certainly is not at all a big monster plant like Tess's Land Race Currant.

As for the Sun Gold/SunGold and Sun Sugar/SunSugar issue, when I first started growing them about a decade ago, they were spelled as one word, as is the name of their sibling, SunCherry. So, I've continued spelling them that way, even though some catalogs have, since that time, changed the name to two separate words.

I went to the ultimate authority, Tatiana's Tomatobase, to see how she listed them in her index and you can see what she does by clicking on the link below.

Jay, You probably shouldn't click on the link below because if you do, you might find 3 or 4 Sungold crosses you haven't tried yet.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: The S Listing at Tatiana's T-base

Hi Jay. Nice to meet you. I appreciate your advice - mulch, mulch, mulch - and will use it. Most years, it doesn't get very cold here, this year less than usual. First frost in mid-Dec, last frost in Feb. In normal years, we get 45-50" of rain. About 20-25' less for past 2-3 yrs. Summers are hot and humid so it can feel like the tropics in the summer.

Our "back yard" is a big open field. The field used to have lots of mature hardwoods and pines but Hurricane Isabel took down all the trees in 2003, leaving an empty barren field of weeds. In 2008, I planted 1,100 tree seedlings - I love forests and wanted to help Mother Nature create a forest faster than she would on her own. Four years later, many of the seedlings have grown into 20'-25' trees. I thought shade from trees would mean less grass to cut but that hasn't happened yet. I do rake grass clippings and use them to mulch beds but am not as diligent as I could be. I'm on good terms with all the tree trimmers who bring truckloads of chips. I use the front loader to turn new chips and speed up decomposition. You can never have too many chips or too much mulch. I want to learn how to use cover crops to improve the soil, and to produce another source of mulch. Maybe alfalfa.

Dawn, bad thoughts about the large predators. Humans or other animals? Thanks for the detailed step-by-step description of how you raise so many tomatoes and other crops. I stopped using landscape fabric in flower and herb beds a few years ago. I was working to improve the soil with compost so having to remove landscape fabric from beds filled wit flowers and shrubs made that job more difficult. I don't recall why I stopped using it in vegetable gardens. I need to rethink that.

400 tomato plants! Holy moly! I think some of us need to peer over the edge of a cliff before we realize that we need to take a few steps back.

On a different note - you must type 200 wpm!! Your thoughts are clear, spelling is excellent. I am in awe!

It's getting late and I still have some real work to do before I can hit the hay. I'll probably dream about mulch mulch mulch!

Take care,
Pam

Pam, Sorry. I should have made it more clear. Cougars. Two different ones. About six weeks apart. A few years ago. Scared me more than anyone can ever imagine if they haven't been through it.

I myself haven't seen a single one the last couple of years, but close neighbors on either side of us have seen them in the last year. One saw a cougar crossing our yard last April or May right by my garden. It was right around sunrise. Another saw one in his backyard. It saw him and jumped the fence headed for the creek just beyond his fenceline. That was back around Thanksgiving.

All kinds of smaller predators are common here...coyotes, bobcats, foxes, etc. and they worry me for the sake of my pet cats and poultry, but when it coes to the cougars, they scare me for myself. Feral pigs occasionally come onto our land and they are very dangerous, but whenever I've seen them on or near our property, there's been a barbed wire fence between them and me. Seeing one of those pigs is a good reason to head for the house.

I lift the fabric in the winter and slide the mostly decomposed mulch off of it and directly into that bed. Then I scoop up all the decoposed mulch in the pathways and put that in the paths. Then I remulch the paths. That way the soil is continually fed by regular additions of organic matter every year, which explains how we're slowly turning dense red clay into brown loamy-clayey soil. Is the fabric mulch worth all the time and effort? It is to me. Since I use hay for mulch and hay can be full of weed seeds, I'd go nuts weeding nonstop every day without that fabric mulch.

In some areas I've used sheets of newspaper and sheets of cardboard instead of landscape fabric, but my garden is quite large and it is almost impossible to save that much newspaper or cardboard. I buy the mulch on very large rolls (I think they are either 220' or 230' long and 4' wide) at CostCo and buy at least 2 rolls a year. I reuse it as much as I can, and often the older used fabric mulch goes from a bed to a pathway, folded in half since my paths are half as wide as my beds. I cannot necessarily reuse the fabric mulch in the same beds every year because of crop rotation. I only wish I could buy it custom pre-cut with planting holes at the distances apart that I need. (How lazy does that make me sound?)

My garden slopes and the adjacent land is higher so water flows down into the garden from the neighbor's pasture. The fabric mulch helps reduce erosion during periods of extra-heavy rainfall. Around here rain comes in two amounts: too much or too little. Our lowest annual rainfall in any year since we moved here in 1999 was just under 19" and our highest was a little over 50". Our highest one-day rainfall total is 12.89" and I don't have to tell you what that rain did to plants in a slow-draining clay.

I am trying hard to give up rototilling and build soil from the top down, just like nature builds soil in woodland areas. If I could do only one thing to improve my soil, I'd just keep adding mulch to the surface. As it breaks down it enriches the soil over time. Sometimes I feel like the soil improvement is going so very slow, but then I remember what the soil was like when we moved here and that makes me realize how much it has improved.

If you haven't read any of Ruth Stout's books on mulch gardening, you've missed a huge treat! They are old, but still amazing. Reading her books began my conversion to using huge amounts of mulch.

Hope you're dreaming about mulch right now.

Dawn

I did dream of mulch.

I have tons of mulch but it's in the form of wood chips - young and old. The tree trimmers who clear the power lines come through every two years. I bribe them with fancy pen/highlighters from the office, cookies, and donuts so they will bring their chips to my place. I use the front loader to turn big mountains chips when they are new - by spring, the mountains have shrunk to manageable hills. Some hills are only 1-2 years old, others are several years old and are no longer identifiable as "wood chips."

I've always heard that you shouldn't use pine bark to mulch vegetables, even if it is composted. I don't know if that's correct but I don't want to take that risk so I use chips to make berms and build up low lying areas, on paths between beds.I'm also taking inventory of large containers because I'd like to experiment this year. Have two bales of Pro-Mix BX/Mycorise Pro. Found a link to your recipe for potting soil on a current post about "Potting Mixes and garden updates." Am trying to decide whether I should amend the Pro-Mix BX since it has supplements - perlite, vermiculite, lime, and "mycorise." I think I should. The main ingredient in Pro-Mix BX is peat, so adding pine bark fines should make it better. The potting soil would benefit from the low nitrogen slow release fertilizer. I really liked the idea of adding Epsom salt, bonemeal, and greensand when you plant.

You can get an awfully good education on this forum!

Thank you!
Pam

Thanks for the input everyone! I appreciate it!

Thanks for the info, Dawn! I'll be growing in containers, of course, so that will limit plant size. Later this month, I'll be setting up the trellising unit (conduit/rebar). I was driving down the street day before yesterday and it's close to big trash day, so someone had put out a soccer goal set up. I know this would have been purrrrfect for cukes. I got out and tried to pick it up and haul it home but it was too big to fit in the "hatch" of my car. Darn! I noticed yesterday it was gone, so I bet someone else had the same idea.

Susan

Pam,

"My" recipe is just my adaptation of Al's 5-1-1 mix from the Container Forum. I've tried to tailor it to the kind of conditions I have here, as well as to my wish to largely avoid peat as much as possible. I even vary what I put in it and in what proportions depending on whether I'm expecting a year that is wet, dry or average. For example, if we were expecting an El Nino spring with heavy rainfall, I'd mix it so it drains better but if I was expecting a drier year, I'd add coir to help it hold moisture. When it is very hot and dry here, even 20-gallon and larger containers often need to be watered twice or three times daily in hot weather so my container plants suffer in a dry year if the mix drains too quickly.

As far as the ProMix, that's a lot of peat. If I was going to grow regular plants in it, I'd add pine bark fines for sure. If I was growing acid-lovers like blueberries or azaleas, I'd still add pine fines, but less of them. I can only dream of growing anything here that likes acidity because my soil and water both test at about 8.2 to 8.3. I can modity the soil and lower its pH pretty easily but not the water, so I don't grow anything that prefers highly acidic conditions.

Peat is so peculiar. When it is wet, it can hold moisture forever, and that's what I don't like about it. And, when peat gets really, really dry it is hard to rewet it. In climates where the weather can swing from dropping several inches of rain in a few hours to virtually no rain at all for weeks or even months, I feel like mixes that have a heavy peat component underperform compared to mixes that have only a moderate amount of peat, or no peat at all. I do agree that pine bark fines improve any mix heavy in peat, and would drastically improved most any mix you can buy. The heavier peat component in starter mixes is necessary for great drainage, but I don't like that heavier percentage of peat for growing plants beyond the starter stage.

Pine bark mulch seems controversial in terms of being used in a veggie garden and I suppose it might not be helpful in every situation and every climate. However, I have used it in years when I couldn't find much hay to use as mulch, and I loved it. It looked wonderful, didn't wash away in heavy downpours and didn't cause me any problems.

I read a magazine article once that I think was written by a Texas gardener who was coping with high clay content...as in almost pure clay. Defying the conventional wisdom, he routinely rototilled huge amounts of pine fines and pine mulch (the smaller pieces, not the gigantic ones) into his clay and had huge improvement in a pretty fast time frame. He didn't even state whether he added additional nitrogen to compensate for whatever nitrogen is depeleting as the bark decomposes, but he had enormous soil improvement and was very pleased. His article made me smile because I had started adding some pine mulch to my soil about 3 years before and hadn't noticed any problems and also had huge improvement. For me, the amazing thing is how fast the mulch rototilled into soil breaks down. If I rototill it into soil in January or February, it is largely gone by the following winter. Only a few pieces that were larger than average to begin with will remain a year later. I started adding the pine mulch because so much of my compost was disappearing every year (as the old saying goes, "heat eats compost") and it seemed like I just couldn't add enough to the red clay to fix it. And, I should add, that my red clay is flower pot clay---I believe I could wet it down and work with it and make flower pots---so it takes massive amounts of improvement to make it workable. I wouldn't necessarily add pine bark to fairly normal soil. Having never had fairly normal soil, though, I use lots of pine.

This year I added vast amounts of pine fines and humus to one 8' x 4' raised bed that had amended clay that just was not well-amended enough for potatoes. I then immediately planted the potatoes. That was probably in late January or very early February. Those potato plants are growing incredibly well and are about to flower. By contrast, the four long rows of potato plants planted at the west end of the main garden are 1/3 their size and a lot way from flowering. Those were planted in an 8" deep trench and I covered the seed potatoes with a couple of inches of soil, and then continued to add soil as they grew until the trenches were filled in. It really isn't even fair to compare the performance of potatoes in a raised bed to those in grade-level beds, but it is such a striking difference that I cannot believe it. I do think heavy, heavy rain that filled those trenches with water for several days likely had a negative impact on the potatoes and slowed them down. Clearly I need to add a gazillion tons of pine bark fines and compost to the west end of the veggie garden before next season. It is a sandier-clayier loam than the rest of the veggie garden, but no matter how much compost I add to it, it still seems like it isn't as improved as the heavier clay. I usually grow either sweet potatoes or potatoes there, but then find the soil rock-hard at digging time. It probably is the least-improved soil in which I grow veggies because it started out in better shape than the clay, so I kind of ignored it and didn't amend it nearly as much. Now that the rest of the soil is so much better than the west end, I need to work on the west end a lot to bring it up to speed.

Susan, I'm sorry you couldn't get the soccer goal. That would have been so perfect. I find so many interesting things at garage sales that

can be used in the garden. I got a wooden ladder for $3 once, painted it a medium purple, and now grow purple hyacinth beans on it. It is just the coolest-looking thing when you see only hints of the purple ladder peeking out through all that bean foliage and flowers.

Mommyrosalyn, You're welcome and be sure to let us know what you end up with and how they do for you. That's how we all learn from one another.

I did forget to list one favorite (not hard to do when you have 100 or 200 favorites) that doesn't get a lot of attention but which does produce very well in our climate, and it is one called Fantastic. There's also an improved version of it called Super Fantastic. I actually prefer Fantastic, which I have to raise from seed myself because I usually don't see it in stores, but I see Super Fantastic in stores pretty often.

When you are tomato shopping in chain stores or nursery chain stores watch for tomato plants from Chef Jeff. That particular line carries oodles of heirlooms. However, if you can shop at The Tomatoman's Daughter or at any of the festivals where Duck Creek Farms sells heirloom tomato plants (see link to Duck Creek Farms website below---their schedule of farmer's market and festivals is available there), then any variety they sell likely would please you.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Duck Creek Farms

Fearing the drought and the hot, I went for a mostly cherry and grape tomato garden this year. I have:

1. Rainbow Cherry
2. Green Grape
3. Black Cherry
4. Jellybean Hybrid
5. Patio
6. Yellow Cherry
7. Riesenstraube

For regular tomatoes, I have:

1. Sub-Arctic Plenty
2. St. Pierre
3. Marmande
4. Peach Blow Sutton

I'm trying really hard to limit the amount of tomato plants I have to 12 this year. Right now, 11 are in the ground. I think I could keep 12 watered all summer. Last year's 25 was just too much trouble, especially given the weather.

Kelly

Sorry bumping so I can find all this information again easily.