Dawn, Thanks so much. I can't wait to get them growing!

James,

You're welcome. I hope they grow well for you. Spring is on its way and you can tell it because we all have planting fever, or at least seed-starting fever.

I hope you'll let me know which varieties you like and how they do for you.

And, y'all, I spent most of the afternoon at yet another wildfire, so I'm going to have to stay focused and hope for no fires tomorrow so I can finish the envelopes I'm working on for Robin and Lynn. When we have a bad wildfire season that keeps me tied up a lot, it seems like "the hurrier I go, the behinder I get".

Dawn

Our county is not under a burn ban, but should be. Today we started to town and had to go around another section road because of the smoke from a grass fire on our normal route. They got it out pretty fast, but it was moving extremely fast and covered quite a big chunk of pasture very rapidly. I could see a pile of brush at the south end of it so I imagine someone was burning earlier, and the wind whipped it up again. I would bet that we will be under a burn ban next week.

Rain is forecast for here Monday. Except for the ice we haven't had much moisture this year so far. I don't know how you have time to fight fires and send little envelopes with such good descriptions. I am very happy with the seeds you sent me.

Helen,

Rain is forecast here beginning late Sunday, and we really need it. We're in a D2 drought here (with D0 being abnormally dry and D4 being exceptional drought--D2 is severe drought).

My husband is a police officer/firefighter by profession, and our son is a firefighter/paramedic. Both are volunteer firefighters and my spouse is chief of our local volunteer fire dept.

I don't fight fires myself. In fact, I am allergic to smoke! So, what I do normally is just carry them coolers full of bottled water and Gatorade, and take healthy snacks and meals. The job function I perform is known as Fire Rehab, which basically means taking care of the firefighters so they can take care of the fire. There are 4 ladies in our dept. who do this. At our largest fire yesterday, we provided drinks, snacks and dinner to firefighters from 8 depts. as they battled a wildfire in high winds. The day before, we had provided drinks and snacks to firefighters from only 4 departments. Every now and then we have to evacuate residents and/or animals who are in the path of the fire, but mostly we are just there to support the firefighters.

I also track "fire weather" conditions and forecasts through the National Weather Service and Oklahoma Forest Service, so our guys are aware of changing weather conditions and wildfire predictive numbers like the rate at which fire is expected to spread (in terms of feet per minute). It is especially important to track wind shifts because they are dangerous while fighting a wildfire.

Some years I hardly go to any fires, but in dry years, grassfires and wildfires take over our lives. We're in a very dry, very fire-prone prairie-type area where we've been abnormally dry since August 2007 so we're having a very bad fire year here.

I garden when I can....and that's how I've been working on the seeds....whenever time permits.

During the 2005-2006 drought and wildfire season, the worst ever here in OK, I didn't have much of a garden--although I managed to keep the tomatoes watered, picked and eaten--and I was too busy to get on Garden Web for about a year or a year-and-a-half. It just about killed me!

I'm glad you like the seeds. I include the descriptions on the packet because I want y'all to know what you're getting! I'm awake early this morning trying to finish envelopes for Lynn and Robin and hoping I can get to the post office before the fire pagers sound.

We're hoping and praying for rain here, and the chances are good that we'll get some. Our Jan. rainfall was less than 20% of our usual/average January rainfall. Our rainfall last year was 23", and normally we get about 36" to 38", although we've had so many dry years lately that I don't know what "normal" is any more.

Dawn

Thanks so much Dawn! I am SO looking forward to getting these! I think I've decided to do my toms, at least some of them, in frosting buckets from Wal~Mart. So I'll have plenty of room for them!

We're not under a burn ban here either, but should have been as well. Cliff and I were considering grilling some chuck roast for dinner the Friday night, but the winds were just too high for us to chance firing up the grill. We were worried about errant sparks. Both the charcoal and gas grills are on our concrete patio, but that doesn't help anything with windborn sparks. So, we tucked them into the oven.

We're suppose to start seeing some rain tonight, from the look of the forecast- 70% chance of showers tonight turning into possible steady rain with a few thunderstorms possible- which would be great if it went on for several hours. Tomorrow we also have a chance- 80% chance of morning thunderstorms with afternoon sunshine. Winds both today, tonight and tomorrow in the 20-30 mph range, tomorrow with gusts of 40's possible. Another chance of rain Wednesday, other than that, just cloudy. Even with the rain coming down though, we're still really dry and with those winds, we're still going to have a fire danger. It would be really nice to get a few days of a slow, steady rain, give the ground a good soaking.

As is, I'm planning the best ways to water my new raised beds as conservatively as possible and still see some decent yield. And planning to add plenty of green mulch.

And, I've been looking at frugal tips across the web. Someone mentioned that instead of buying the expensive Wall'O'Water things, to take used (thoroughly washed and rinsed with a vinegar/peroxide mix) freezer bags and fill them with water, taping to keep them in place. My idea was to secure them to the tomato cages where I'm using them. And I'm going to cut up some Folger's coffee cans (red plastic) into rings to put around the bottom of my plants. Has anyone noticed that they really do increase growth and strength of tomato stalks? Unless someone has tried it and just did not notice any benefits, I'll probably try this. Supposedly, it encourages the stalk to become thicker and stronger because the red color makes it think it's competing for space.

Suggestions much appreciated!

Kathy

Dawn - Thank you !!!!!

Kathy,

I've never used the zip-lock bags, but they probably would work. You'd probably have to do a double tier of them in order to get plant protection as tall as you'd get from a WOW.

My favorite "thrifty" WOW substitute is 2-liter bottles glued together in a ring. They look similar to a WOW, only bigger and fatter. It is better to glue them together with a waterproof glue or duct tape them together firmly than to just set them loosely in a ring around the young plant. In you just set up the bottles in a ring around the plant and they're not attached to one another, you run the risk of a bottle or two falling over and crushing your plant.

As far as the red mulch, the research is conflicting and the "tomato experts" on the Tomato Forum here at Garden Web never rave about the stuff or suggest that others use it, so I'd take that as a clue. The original research was done in a very cold location with very weak sunlight and research in more realistic climates where lots of people garden have not been able to replicate the results or have shown mixed results at best. In my opinion, and you can take it or leave it, I wouldn't waste my money buying the red mulch sheets and I wouldn't waste a perfectly good coffee container to create my own red mulch. Except for maybe the first week or two of the growing season, when you might like your soil a little warmer, the last thing you need in Oklahoma is a plastic mulch that's going to heat up the soil more rapidly because one of our main problems here is that the soil gets too hot too soon and we have to use thick layers of mulch (grass clippings, bark, straw, etc.) to combat THAT problem, so your red would be covered up pretty quickly.

One of these days we need to do a thread on "garden helpers or products" that are out-and-out scams, not worth the money, ineffective, or that even have an adverse affect that was not intended. There are lots of such products out there, and people looking for a 'quick fix' often fall for their advertising.

Mitch,

You are very welcome. It was my pleasure to send that envelope of seeds your way.

Dawn

Thanks so much Dawn! That was the info I needed! I was wondering about more frugal ways to create a WOW and the bottles sound a lot more stable than the baggies. I was wondering too about the heat exchange with the red containers. Perhaps it works in cooler places, but I was really wondering about the effects here. So, I'll keep my coffee cans for kitchen compost :)

Kathy

For really small plants, you could even use 1 liter bottles or 20-0z. bottles or juice bottles or whatever you have, but your plants will outgrow them pretty quickly.

Sometimes, if cold weather lingers or reappears after I have small plants in the ground, I buy a roll of 6 mm plastic and wrap it around each cage, securing it with duct tape. Then, even with small bottles, the plastic helps hold in even more heat. And, if frost threatens, I just throw a sheet or blanket over the top of the row of tomato cages to protect the tops of the plastic-protected plants.

There is a downside to wrapping plants in plastic though. Remember how I mentioned someplace else (and I think it must have been in an email?) that air movement helps create stronger, thicker main stems on your tomato plants? Well, wrapping the cage in plastic reduces the wind effect so you plants won't thicken up until you remove the plastic. Does it matter? No so much, at least not if you are going to remove the plastic before May arrives.

If I plant in March and we are having a lot of wind, I like wrapping the cages in plastic because March's rip-roaring wind can wind-burn (and even kill) plants even though they were well-hardened off before planting. So, although I don't routinely wrap cages in plastic every year, I'll do it if conditions warrant. Usually it is a short term plant protector I'll use for 1 to 4 or 5 weeks if I use it at all.

If I plant in April when the winds have already settled down a little (most years), I am not as likely to wrap the cages unless we're having a lot of cold nights. In either case, the plastic needs to come off before you're having too much rainfall/humidity and warm/hot days because the plastic impedes air flow and can keep the moisture from drying on your foliage. And, wet foliage = diseased foliage quite often.

Kathy, if you have access to the large white frosting buckets used at most Wal-Mart bakeries, they also make great plant protectors. Cut the bottoms out of the buckets (and you can do this with any bucket) and use them as a "wind block/heat-retainer" for each plant. Plant your tomato plants, then set a bucket around each plant much as you would set a cage around a plant. Work the plant down 2-4" into the soil so the wind won't blow it over and damage your plants. With very young, 4 to 6 week old plants, this will give them temporary protection from very strong winds and you can snap the lid onto the bucket to cover the plant if frost threatens. However, the bucket alone won't protect the plant from all cold nights--you'll still need water bottles or some other heat source.

One of my neighbors uses the white bucket method to protect his plants. He usually plants them in earliest April, and keeps the buckets on until latest April to earliest May. Even though the buckets keep his plants slightly smaller due to decreased air flow, they do keep them from freezing. And, since his plants have been warm and have remained healthy, they grow very quickly in May.

As far as soil warmth, I start out with only light mulch on the beds early in the season because I want the soil to warm up as much as it can early on. Once May's pretty warm temperatures arrive, I start adding mulch (usually grass clippings) as often as I can--every time we mow. By the time June arrives, I like to have 3" to 6" of mulch around the tomato plants and I just keep adding more all summer long. Hot soil is one of your tomato plants worst enemies. Although it is air temperature that controls pollination/fertilization to a large extent, it is soil temperatures that can affect plant growth negatively if that soil gets too hot. I like plastic mulches and they have their place--for example, they can block weeds, warm up soil very early in the season, and can reduce soil splash and disease transference. But, almost as soon as you put them on the ground, you have to mulch over them.

Dawn

Fantastic Dawn, and thank you. I have to put a mark in the postitive column of the PO also. I dropped my SASBE in the mail Friday AM which means they left the PO at 5PM. If they were delivered to you on Saturday in time to put the back in the mail, somebody is doing a very good job. Wouldn't it be amazing if I got them today, on Monday? I'll let you know

Seedmama,

The post office in Thackerville was closed on Saturday by the time my dear husband stopped there to weigh and mail envelopes. So, he mailed them late in the day from Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. If you get them today, I'll be really amazed and impressed. I was impressed at how quickly your envelope got to me.

I think the USPS does a pretty good job here in OK. There have been several times that I've mailed out a huge stack of Christmas cards or Christmas Party invitations from Thackerville in the afternoon, only to find that the mail travels from Thackerville to OKC and back to Thackerville and Marietta by the very next day! (I always mail a card or invitation to myself so that I know when they arrive because the cards/invitations are for the fire dept. members and I want to be sure the whole batch doesn't get lost somehow.)

If you don't get your envelope today, I bet you'll get it tomorrow though. I hope you like the seed selection. I'm keeping my eyes open for Polish tomatoes. In case you haven't come across these, here's the names of a few Polish ones that I'm aware of: Opalka, Polish C., Dwarf Polish, Polish Linguisa, and Debbie. I know there must be many others.

Dawn

For every good thing you can say about postal service, I can name you three bad things!!!!!!!

I cringe everytime I hear postage is going up or they want to cut down on service days.

I mailed an envelope for pepper seeds before the 20th of December and it hasn't arrived at it's destination yet. I was in a swap that was mailed to me from NC on about 21 January and I haven't seen it yet. I suppose they could have torn the label off the 2nd one, but it has my return address on it. The first one was written on the envelope. They took a box back to the post office and called to tell me I didn't have a mail box, although it has been there the 7 years I have lived here. I got there and they couldn't find it, then argued with me that I didn't live at my address because the numbers didn't go up that high on my street. Then they found the package and it had two notes on it, one was another street, the other said "vacant house but they were home". OK if they were home, how is it a vacant house and why can't you give it to them. Neither the address hand written on the box by the PO or my house was vacant so go fiture. Week before last I received a magazine for my best friend that lives a mile from me (as the crow flies) and not even close by road. I picked up my neighbors mail under the mailbox on the ground. I helped another neighbor find the person whose mail she got in error. I also had one package returned. All of this since mid December.

Last year in April, I got a notice that I hadn't paid my water bill in March. They were right, I hadn't noticed. The bill finally arrived in September.

However, I sent an envelope to George on one Monday and got it back with seeds on Thursday, so I guess it is true that even a blind hog finds an acorn now and then.

Carol,

Your tale of amazingly poor mail service had me rolling on the floor laughing.....

I am happy to say that we've never had an experience like that since we moved here. I suppose something must be going on at your local post office because the service sounds pitiful. Have you tried complaining to your local postmaster?

I guess we are very fortunate. Our local postal carrier goes out of her way to make sure everyone gets their mail as quickly as possible. I wish you had the kind of mail delivery person that we have.

At least you know the system works between you and George! I was afraid you were going to tell me that it came from George in NE OK to you in NE OK via New York city or something. LOL

Jen,

If you see this.....your envelope arrived today. I just finished stuffing it full of seeds and it will go out in tomorrow morning's mail, so you should have it in a couple of days. Well, unless your mail delivery is like Soonergrandmom's, in which case I am not sure when or if you'll ever get it. : )

Dawn

Carol,
You PO tales closely mimick my usual experiences, which is why I posted a tale of good service. I'm hoping to change the karma.

Every Saturday, my neighbors and I meet on the cul de sac to swap out the mail that was misdelivered. Which is better than the mail that never shows up or the mail we regularly get after 7 p.m. Oh man, I better stop now or I'll never get a change in karma.

Hehe... I have excellent delivery and pickup... DH is a rural postal carrier and he works from the same office as our home carrier. Not to mention my home carrier is a sweetie who doesn't mind my never-ending flow of bubble envelopes and boxes. I even have DH apologize to him occasionally when I have a particularly hot and heavy trading blitz going on. I remember one day in particular I had not only some trades going on, but had offered newbie seed packets. That one day I had 15 bubble envelopes and my flat rate box (printed the postage and DC# at home)for my round robin swap going out. I called Cliff and told him to please apologize to our carrier for me! And let's keep in mind, I live in Edmond... so my carrier is a city carrier and walks his route. Cliff called me later and said our carrier laughed and said that at least I warn him and I always have everything nicely bundled for him.

And thankfully all three of the Edmond offices know the proper postage for a bubble envelope meeting the requirements! They don't over charge like many POs a lot of traders deal with. I'd hate to have to argue with DH's bosses!

I'm guessing I'll either see my package from you, Dawn, tomorrow or Wednesday. With him mailing from Dallas, it may take that extra day. I'm just tickled to be getting so may that I'm wanting to try!

Kathy

Never had a problem w/ mail delivery, on w/ the little neighbor boy who was stealing mail out of people's boxes. Found out about that when I got a rather nasty letter from a credit card saying I hadn't paid in several months. Neighborhood boy is gone, but I still won't mail from home. Much easier & safer to mail from work.

Can't wait to get my seeds! This is the first year of really trying to grow seeds, so I'm going nuts. Every window in my house now has little seedling pots. I've tried before, unsuccessfully, & everything seems to die. This year, tho....

Seedmama,

That is truly dreadful. At least you're on a cul-de-sac so the mail exchange is easy. Watch that karma thing!

Kathy,

If you ever have trouble with your mail, then I'll know there is no hope for the rest of us. : )

Jen,

My spouse is a law enforcement officer and he won't let us mail anything from our rural box. In fact, he won't drop anything in the official boxes outside the post office....we have to go inside and drop it in the slots. There is so much thievery and identity theft these days that it pays to be careful.

Sometimes, when I have extra tomatoes in the summer, I leave them hanging on the outside of the mail box for my rural carrier. Maybe that's why we get great service--because she gets fresh tomatoes in season! LOL

Jen, if you have seedling problems, talk to us as soon as you see signs of trouble and we'll try to help. We have quite a few people who start many kinds of seed every year.

Y'all let me know when you get your seeds, so I won't have to wonder if my "babies" arrived safely at their new homes.

Dawn

Dawn,
My seeds arrived today, just as predicted. I must say I am tickled pink. And black. And yellow....

Can't wait to sow them, can't wait to eat them. Thanks for the generosity.

Seedmama

Got my seeds tonite when I got home. I have to say, your idea of "a few" & my idea of "a few" are off. Holy smokes, I'll never have to buy a tomato seed again! Now the problem is deciding which one to try first.

Seedmama,

You are so very welcome. I just hope you have as much fun trying all the different ones that I do. And, if it is more than you'll ever get around to using.....you can give them away or trade them and it won't hurt my feelings. : )

Jen,

OK, so I went a little overboard, but here's the reason why. Heirloom tomatoes are like fine wines--every one of them has their own special flavor and aroma, each has a special and sometimes very unique appearance. Every time I think I have found, grown and eaten "the best heirloom tomato ever", I discover I am wrong. It isn't that there is one "best ever"--it is that there are so very many wonderful ones. Exploring the wonderful diverse world of heirloom tomatoes is just like trying different vintages of wine.....or exploring the world of fine chocolates.

So, have fun and enjoy. And never describe one as "the best ever" because I guarantee you that a year or two later, a new "best ever" will sweep you off your feet.

I wish you both a grand gardening season in 2009.

Dawn

Dawn, my seeds arrived yesterday!! My goodness! The variety!!!I'm having a hard time deciding just which ones to plant first! Any suggestions there would be great! Thank you so much for being so generous! I'm gonna share a few seeds of some of these with friends that I know have been looking for them, as I mentioned to you in our emails. We're all so excited to get these planted!

Kathy

Kathy,

I am so glad you got them. And you are so very welcome. It was my pleasure to share them with you. I was hoping that they weren't ripped out of Edmond and the mail distribution system (or your mailbox) by the tornadic winds the other day. I could just picture that envelope full of tomato seeds flying away into the sky.

As far as which ones to plant, tell me how many tomato plants you're planting this year, and I'll try to come up with some recommendations. Off the top of my head, I can't remember which ones I sent you, but I can look back at the list you sent me and then try to remember which "extras" I threw in.

With heirlooms, though, often the best thing to do is just to "try 'em and see if you like 'em". Everybody's taste buds are different so what tastes great to me might not taste great to you and vice versa. (On the internet, this difference is often expressed as LMMV for "your mileage may vary".) Here's an example: many, many people rave online about Kellogg's Breakfast. I have grown it 3 or 4 times and it has never produced well for me. And, the few tomatoes it has produced haven't been that impressive at all so I keep wondering what the others are raving about. On the other hand, Nebraska Wedding (which looks somewhat similar to KB) is hardly ever mentioned online by anyone, but it produces big, orange, meaty tomatoes with incredible flavor in my garden. Its' taste is amazing. We adore it. So, all I can assume is that NW is wonderful for us the way that KB is wonderful for many other people. Maybe our soil/climate are better for NW than for KB. Maybe it is our taste buds. Who knows?

I have tomato fever too and I look at the very teeny-tiny seedlings on my light shelf and wonder how they possibly could be ready by tomato-planting time, and yet, I know they will be. The handful of plants I am going to put in my containers today should "feed my need to plant" something for a few days, and I hope to get my onions and potatoes in the ground the next couple of days. Then before I know it, early March will be here and the broccoli plants can go into the ground.

I am SO ready for spring and sitting and sorting through piles of tomato seed packets has only made it worse, I think. I am so ready to get out and play in the dirt, but right now my dirt is mud, and that's actually a good thing.

Dawn

I'm sure I could probably do 6 or so in my new raised beds, and probably another 5-6 in 5 gallon buckets. I'm wanting slicers (mainly for fried green tomatoes!), and tomatoes for salsa and tomato sauce/paste. Toward the end of the season I may do chow-chow or green relish as well.

Does that help any?

Kathy

Kathy,

Of the seeds I sent you, I'd choose the tomatoes for the raised bed from this list:

1) For a black type: Black or Black Sea Man
2) For a green-when-ripe type: Green Sausage or Green Zebra
3) For a red type: Granny Cantrell's German Red or Zogola or Tomande
4) For an orange type: Persimmon (heavier producer) or Kellogg's Breakfast (larger fruit)
5) For a pink or purple type: Pruden's Purple or Marianna's Peace
6) For a cherry: Black Cherry (if it was one of the extras I sent you--I can't remember) or Yellow Pear
7) For a paste type: Grandma Mary's Paste or Jersey Devil (could grow in the 5-gallon buckets)

For the 5 or 6 to grow in 5-gallon buckets, I'd pick from this list:

1) Husky Red Cherry or Isis Candy for a cherry type
2) Black Prince or Black Plum for a black type
3) Polish Dwarf or Jaune Flamme' for smallish tomatoes that are great for salads and slicing
4) Wapisipicon Peach because it is a unique, sweet flavor
5) Mortgage Lifter VFN or Olena Ukrainian for a red one

If I included "Mountain Princess" as one of your extras, I'd substitute it for any one of the in-the-ground plants because it is such an early producer and a prolific one.

And, I hope I did send you "Black Cherry" as one of your extras, because it is one of my all time favorite tomatoes. If I could have only one single, solitary plant this year, I'd plant Black Cherry because its' flavor is exquisite and it is a heavy producer. Yes, it is that good!

I hope this helps you narrow it down.

Dawn

Dawn, those are almost exactly what I was thinking! LOL, those are the ones I set aside last night almost down to the last one! And yes, you did send me the Black Cherry! And I have some Chocolate Cherry that I'm going to try as well, I managed to get a few seeds :). I figure a bucket or planter for it. Those should give me plenty of variety and I'll be able to do everything that I want to do with them as far as frying, canning, drying. Thanks so much for the advice and again, for the seeds! I'm getting them germinated this evening and gonna hopefully have them in their Jiffy pellets in the next few days :) I've never pre sprouted on the tomatoes before, so any advice there?

Kathy

Kathy,

See, the old saying is true...."Great minds think alike". LOL

I'd just like to tell you that my Black Cherry plants last year were huge monsters--getting about 9' tall and at least 3' wide. Once they reached the top of their 9' tall cage (a 3' tall cage on top of a 6' tall cage), they beginning cascading back down to the ground. So, Black Cherry is definitely productive and, if happy, grows and produces like mad. Site it accordingly. : )

I hope you'll let me know how Chocolate Cherry compares to Black Cherry because I've never grown it.

As far as pre-sprouting, there are many ways but here's how I do it. I pre-soak them and the pan of choice for me is a muffin tin. I draw myself a diagram of the tin and write down in each "cup" just what seed is soaking there, so that I can keep them straight. First, I put about an inch of water in each muffin cup. Then I add one variety of tomato seed to each cup, taking care to jot down the name of the variety on the diagram. I set them in an out-of-the-way place so no one will decide to pick up the tin and throw it into the dishwasher, as my DH did one year. LOL Then, I let them soak for 12-24 hours.

After they've soaked, I prepare snack-size or sandwich size zip-lock bags for them, using a Sharpie to label each bag with the variety name. I take a stack of paper towels cut into fourths, or coffee filters cut in half, and place the seed of each variety on a napkin or coffee filter, roll up the material with the seeds inside, place it inside the labeled zip-lock bag, and zip it shut. Then I put all of them in a Wal-Mart bag or some other bag, label it "TOMATO SEEDS" in big letters written on a piece of duct tape and set it aside for a few days--maybe 3 or 4 or up to 6 or 7. I check every couple of days and as soon as growth is sprouting from the seeds, I remove them from their bags and plant all the seeds of each variety in one peat pellet or one paper cup of seed-starting soilless mix.
I use small plant stakes (barely taller than the peat pellet or container or they'll keep you from lowering the lights as closely to the emerging plants as you should) that I've cut from plastic detergent or bleach bottles, or from slats from an old mini-blind.

If you want, you can go straight from the soaking to planting without waiting several days for them to pre-sprout, but I prefer pre-sprouting because I know before the seeds go into the peat pellets or soilless mix that they are going to grow. Otherwise, you often have to wait a week or two to see what sprouts and then, if a particular variety doesn't germinate, you're starting over again a week or two "late".

If you have a seed germination mat, you can go straight from soaking to planting and then set the flat on top of the germination mat and you'll have quick sprouting. I usually use the germination mat for peppers and not for tomatoes, but that's just me.

If I didn't explain this well, ask questions, because I've done it so long that I sometimes skip a step when describing it, although I don't think I left out anything important this time.

Dawn

I mailed off my envelope today! Thanks for this opportunity and generosity, Dawn!

Gamebird, I'll be watching for your envelope and suspect I'll get it either tomorrow or Saturday.

Melissa, I received your envelope today, am working right now on filling it up, and it will go out in tomorrow's mail, so you should receive it either Saturday or Monday.

Dawn

Dawn, Alright, I've narrowed my choices to the following:
In Ground (raised beds):
Black
Green Zebra
Granny Cantrell's German Red
Kellogg's Breakfast
Pruden's Purple
Black Cherry
Grandma Mary's Paste
And I'll find room for Mountain Princess

Containers:
Husky Red Cherry
Black Plum
Jaune Flamme
Wapisipicon Peach
Mortgage Lifter VFN

I'm also going to find room somewhere for the Chocolate cherry tomato and the Rosalita you sent me... in ground or containers on these?

Now, my next question is, what do you do with each of these? Since I've never grown ANY of them before, I'm interested in what you do with them- slicing, paste, sauces, salsa, drying...? I know you've grown them before and I know you're going to have more insight into which ways they're best utilized. I'm looking at doing 1, perhaps two of each plant. Are there any that really need two of the same plant, or will just having other tomato plants nearby be enough? I've always grown two of the same plant, but if I don't need to, this will save me space and let me plant more variety :)

Kathy

Kathy,

Just like Bluebell Ice Cream always says "We eat all we can and sell the rest...." No, just kidding, we don't actually sell any. LOL

We absolutely eat all we can. The first few ripe tomatoes always go into bacon-lettuce-tomato sandwiches, which is ALL we eat in spring when the first tomatoes are available. Then, after we calm down from the excitement of having tomatoes, we began to eat them in salads, sliced, or even held in our hands and eaten the same way you'd eat a fresh peach. When the tomatoes start getting ripe, that's about all I eat--tomatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes.

Here's a typical "tomato day" early in the season when the tomatoes are ripening: I'll chop them up and stir them into an omelet (along with garden-fresh green onions and mini bell peppers) for breakfast, eat handfuls of little ones while working in the garden, and then come inside for lunch. Lunch will be a BLT (turkey bacon most of the time, but really good, high-quality "real"bacon for the first few) or even fried green tomato BLTs with cilantro mayo. Then, if I work outside in the garden in the afternoon, you know I'm going to eat several handfuls of cherry types like Black Cherry, Sungold, Tess's Land Race Currant, etc. Dinner? At the very least, it will include a salad with fresh tomatoes. Maybe a sauce if there's that many ripe or tomato-onion pie, or salsa, etc. When tomatoes are in season, we can't get enough of them. I also like to make gazpacho, a tomato-based chicken tortilla soup, taco soup or tomato-basil soup.

I also dehydrate larger ones, but cut them into quarters or even eighths so they dry more quickly.

I used to give a whole lot away, but now I put up more for winter and give fewer away. You can even freeze them whole. Just pop them into a freezer bag and freeze them after you've washed them and let them dry. In the winter, you can take them out of the freezer and use them in sauces or soups.

I love to make sauce from a combination of different kinds. The best tomato sauces I've ever made have been a combination of many kinds of heirloom tomatoes--not all paste ones. The blacks and the Brandywine types, in particular, makes the most amazing sauces and salsas.

For drying, you can use a small food dehydrator (Wal-Mart usually has the round ones with several trays), a large and fancy dehydrator like an Excaliber (sp?) or even an oven. You can dry them in a regular oven by slicing the cherry, pear, and currant tomatoes in half and placing them skin down/cut side facing upward on baking sheets, setting the oven on its lowest setting "warm", and 'baking' them until they are sufficiently dry.

If you have a convection oven, you can use the convection oven to dry them even more quickly. My stove (which certainly is smarter than I am and has feature I've never even tried to use) has a "Dehydrate" feature meant to be used with the convection oven. I just love it. I can dry six cookie sheets of tomatoes at one time, and the house smells heavenly when they are drying. I feel like I've died and gone to tomato heaven when the house smells like that! I dry thousands of small tomatoes every year, pack them into zip-lock bags and put them in the freezer. During the "off-season", I pull out a bag and eat them. You can eat them dry--they resemble raisins except with intense tomato flavor--or you can rehydrate them in a bowl of water for a couple of hours. Or, you can use them in any recipe that calls for sun-dried tomatoes. I like them any way at all.

In an exceptionally rainy year, the excess rain "waters down" the flavor of tomatoes and almost ruins them because it makes them so bland. (People who over-water and over-fertilize often "ruin" their tomtoes in the same way.) In a year like that, you can "salvage" your crop, though, by either dehydrating them, which removes the excess moisture and intensifies the flavor, or by cooking them down into sauce, which does the same thing.

I have recipes to prepare tomatoes many different ways and I'll share some of them with you as the tomatoes ripen. I even have recipes for tomato pie and tomato cake! (Tomatoes are VERY versatile.)

Here's how I use them:

Cherry, Grape, Currant types: eat by the handful all day long straight off the vines while working in the garden. If you don't spray with chemicals, you can do this. If you spray your plants with Daconil (chlorothalonil) or any other chemical sprays (whether natural or chemical in nature), you obviously have to wash the fruit first. We eat them in salads daily, dehydrate them for the winter months, etc. If you raise Principe' Borghese, you can pull it up by the roots and air-dry it by hanging it upside down in a dry basement, attic, cellar, etc. but you can't really "sun-dry" them here in OK the way they do in Italy because we have too much humidity. Well, people in SW OK might be able to sun-dry, but I can't even do it here in southcentral OK except in the hottest, driest droughts when humidity is insanely low.
With the paste tomatoes, we use them for salsa. You have to have several paste tomato plants to get enough ripe ones at one time for tomato sauce. It takes a LOT of tomatoes to make a pot of pasta sauce. Remember that tomatoes are largely water and most of that water boils away so what seems like a "lot" of tomatoes cooks down over the hours into a relatively small amount of sauce. So, most of the paste tomatoes we raise are used for salsa or pico de gallo.

Yellow pear and other similar yellow tomatoes make wonderful tomato marmalade or tomato preserves, but you can only make small batches of a few jars unless you have multiple plants.

When you start getting lots of tomatoes, you can use them so many ways......one of my favorite is a tomato-onion pie that is sort of like a quiche. They make great, fairly quick pizza sauce and then you can make pizza using home-made crust or Boboli crusts. If I want to make a pizza or pasta sauce for dinner, I fill up a crockpot with tomatoes in the morning after breakfast, set it on low and let them cook down all day. Sometimes I remove the lid so more moisture cooks off more quickly. Then, when I come in at 3 or 4, I transfer them to a pot on the stove, boil them down as needed, and add the remaining ingredients, simmering the sauce for an hour or two for dinner at 5 or 6 p.m. Kathy, there are so many ways to prepare them! Sometimes, I think people get "bogged down" or "stuck" eating them fresh and forget how versatile they are. Maybe we can start a "favorite tomato recipe" thread in a few weeks and just keep adding to it and adding to it.

One plant of each variety is fine, unless you want more. If I am planning on making and canning a LOT of sauce, I plant a couple of dozen paste tomatoes--they grow very well in buckets. You don't have room for that many, and I can't can as much as I used to because my new stove, purchased last summer, has a ceramic top and canning is not recomended. The old stove is in the garage, though, and I can plug it in and use it for canning because it was the oven that went out on it, not the burners. (For some reason, DH really wanted a "new" stove, although I would have been happy fixing the old one's oven.)

Tomato plants are self-fertile, so they pollinate and fertilize themselves via air movement, so only one type of each is needed. Of course, as space allows you can add more. If you want to save seed AND you want to avoid the possibility of having insects like small bees and flies cause cross-pollination, you have to bag your blossoms even before they open. For blossom bagging, just go to the wedding part of the craft section at your local Wal-Mart (tee hee) and buy a set of the litle bags sold there for rice or whatever. I think one package has ten bags? After the fruit form, you can remove the bags and re-use them, but be sure to mark that branch so you know to save seeds from that cluster of tomatoes. I usually use surveyor's tape as a marker when I bag blossoms, but I don't do it all that often because I'm so busy during the garden season that I don't save a lot of seeds.

I hope I answered your questions. If I didn't, ask more or ask again.

And, if you want to see which tomatoes are "in favor" this year, watch when I type up the list of what actually went into the ground. I often plant two of each variety, but then maybe 4 of a few of the ones we really adore. Well, except for Tess's Land Race Currant. It gets so huge that one is all you need and, even at that, I leave hundreds and hundreds of them on the plant for the birds because I get tired of picking the thousands of tiny tomatoes that one plant makes over the course of the growing season. In the "old days" they used to plant hollyhocks to "hide" the outhouse from view. Well, if I had an outhouse, I'd just plant one Tess's Land Race Currant and it would hide it from view all by itself!

Happy tomato growing and eating! Now that I have tomatoes on the brain, I'm going to go take a bag out of the freezer now to rehydrate for lunch.

Dawn

Gamebird,

I received your envelope this morning and am working on it right now. I sent you an e-mail with a question.

Melissa,

Your envelope went out this morning so should reach you soon.

Dawn

Dawn, Thanks for the go ahead on sharing of seeds. I DO love to share! Yes, trying new varieties is fun. I've sown 74 varieties so far, and still have 10 or so more to do, when I get more markers made from bleach bottles.

Thanks for the variety. I'm on a black jag this year, on a mission to try as many as possible. The inspiration to try Polish tomatoes came about in an odd way, so I'm behind, but so far I have Olen'ka, Soldacki, Slava Poryni, Betalux, Atol, and now Polish Dwarf, and Zogola. I wasn't aware of Debbie, so I'll have to track some down. I'm also looking for Bursztyn, Linguisa and Opalka.

Dawn - I had to laugh at your comments to Kathy about the tomato seed flying through the air and thought you might enjoy this story.

The Tulsa TV station carried a story after the tornado in Lone Grove. Some family came home and found a $50.00 check from Lone Grove on their front porch in Broken Arrow. The check was day, but when they found it they were having rain. I guess it travelled in the wind. I wondered how many more things they will find.

I talked to my aunt today in Lone Grove and she said that one of her friends has been finding some of her things spread over a three mile area. My aunt had given this lady a small box a few years ago, and she found the box. She was especially glad because it contained a small insurance policy which they have already been able to collect on.

I understand that my sister now has phone service, but you couldn't prove it by me. I have called all day and not gotten an answer. Maybe she is out helping to seach those three miles. LOL

Dawn,

Where are your instructions about what one needs to send you to get some of your tomato seeds.

And a Happy Valentines Day to all you ladies on the list. I hope you have a good one.

Hank

Hank,

Go back to the main page of the Oklahoma Forum where all the threads are listed. In the middle of the page in bold print it says On Topic Discussions. To the right of that it says Switch to: Exchanges Gallery. Click on Exchanges and it will take you to the exchange page. Once you are there, you'll see all the listings. Just click on the one you want to read.

Carol,

The check in Broken Arrow is kind of amazing. There also was a news story about building materials--I think it was wallboard with wallpaper attached and some roofing--coming down and landing in a resort quite some distance from Lone Grove. I think it was at Sulphur. The guy who found it on his property called the NWS and they said they wondered where the roofing went. They told him that normally such materials come down 3 or 4 miles away and they were surprised they hadn't found it when they searched for it.

And, too, the NWS now has confirmed the two tornadoes on the ground in Montague County, TX, a short time before the Lone Grove tornado.

From listening to the police and fire radios and live reports at the time, we believe the tornado that touched down near Spanish Fort in Montague County and then crossed the Red River near Rubottom, Courtney and Leon may be the same one that hit Lone Grove after it hopped, skipped and jumped through western Love County. Obviously, though, it strengthened before it came back down to the ground on the outskirts of Lone Grove.

Photos and survivor accounts continue to astonish us. I know central OK sometimes sees these very strong and damaging tornadoes, but EF-4s are not real common around here. I will tell you though that 99% of the time if we have violent weather of any sort it tends to come out of Montague or Cooke County, TX, so we always pay more attention when the weather is coming at us from that direction.
And there are still a lot of phone problems but I think it has more to do with "busy circuits" cause everyone is calling everyone else.

Dawn

Dawn,
I got my seeds last Thursday. Thanks so much for the extras as well! James

Hi James,

I'm glad to hear that you received them and I hope you enjoy them. You are so welcome. Throwing in the extras was fun for me, 'cause I like surprising y'all.

Keep us posted on your gardening activities this year!

Dawn