I'm glad you're having a great tomato year. If I was guessing, I'd think the weather has been the biggest contributing factor, though the changes to your soil probably also helped. No matter how good my soil is, the weather and how early I get the plants in the ground largely determine what sort of tomato year it will be.

You know, you can have the best soil in the world, but once the temperatures are high enough to impede fruit set, which can happen as early as early to mid-May in a hotter/drier than average year like 2011, then most tomato plants stop setting fruit period. So, when the weather allows for lots of fruit set, you've got to give the weather the credit. If you're liking the flavor better, though, then you probably could give the soil credit for that.

I generally have not grown Heidi and Viva Italia in the same year, so I don't know that I can tell you how to tell them apart because I think it would be hard to just look at the plants or fruit and know which is which. I always label my plants and make a map that shows the location of each plant by variety name in the garden. I do both on the day they are planted before something happens to the plant labels/tags. Based on my experience with my soil and my weather here in whichever years I have grown either of them, (and yours may not be the same), I think Heidi plants get a foot or maybe 18" taller than Viva Italia and Heidi is less prone to BER in a very dry and very hot year when it is hard to keep the soil evenly moist. The fresh flavor of Viva Italia is more pleasing to my taste buds, but I don't grow either variety for fresh eating---only for canning. I do think that in most years, Viva Italia has been less prone to foliar disease than Heidi, but then I wasn't growing them in the same year, so it is hard to compare since our weather is so variable from one year to the next. Viva Italia pumps out relatively uniform fruit, and some years you see more variation in the shape of Heidi's fruit (but not always) so that might or might not be a way to tell them apart in any given year.

Now, here's something interesting---I am moving more and more away from growing paste tomatoes or even from growing Principe' Borghese for drying just as you are achieving success with them. It is more about my evolution as a canner than as a gardener. Over the years, I have gotten to where I prefer the flavor of salsa and pasta sauce made from a wide variety of heirloom slicers and beefsteaks to that of salsa and pasta sauce made with paste tomatoes. Of course, it matters less with salsa since the predominant flavors are those of the peppers and spices and the tomato is just the base flavor. The flavor of a blend of many heirloom tomato varieties is just so superior to the flavor of any paste tomato that I don't even use paste tomatoes in sauce any longer, only in salsa or for sun-dried tomatoes. This year I planted the smallest number of paste tomatoes ever--I think I put maybe 24 to 26 paste plants in the ground versus about 80 non-paste plants. I already had canned at least 160-170 pints of salsa (yes, that's a lot but we give it as gifts to a ton of people at Christmas time) made from blends of slicers, beefsteaks, hearts and cherries before we even got our first ripe paste tomato. If I'd had to wait for the paste types to get busy and produce ripe fruit, I'd just have started making salsa in the last 10-12 days and likely would be sweating it out in the kitchen for all of July. Instead, I am almost done with the tomato canning and am contemplating yanking out the paste types this week after I harvest one more round off of them. It isn't entirely their fault they are so late---they were the last two rows of plants I planted this year and then they got hit by herbicide drift a couple of times, so they have had to struggle to survive. With a pronounced lack of rainfall and with the real summer heat now here, I have no desire to keep watering plants I don't really need.

I used to love Principe' Borghese for drying, except for the fact that they are so small and take forever to slice in half before I dehydrate them. It probably isn't a big issue in a small garden with only a couple of PB plants, but my garden is large and I usually plant a lot of PBs, or at least I used to. After the summer of 2012 when I could spend 6 to 8 hours a day picking only PB and nothing else, I told myself I'd let that variety go and only grow larger varieties for drying simply as an efficiency measure. Because I can, freeze and dehydrate so many different crops and not just tomatoes from our large garden, it got to where PB just slowed me down too much. I have to find ways to grow, harvest and preserve food more efficiently or I'll never get to sleep, so the little tomatoes that are time-consuming to process are out. We never liked them as fresh eating tomatoes anyhow since it took dehydrating to bring out their flavor, so we won't miss them much---there's plenty of other varieties to dry that won't be so time-consuming to pick and slice.

I started trying varieties that produce larger, meatier paste type fruit after I started using BrokenBar's recipe for wine-marinated sun-dried tomatoes. They're so delicious to eat, so I started looking at her grow lists of big, meaty paste types that she used to make sun-dried tomatoes and have tried several of them. Processing the larger fruit is so much more efficient, so now I am dropping the varieties that produce smaller paste or plum types in favor of those that produce larger ones to use for the marinated SDTs.

Next year I plan to plant even fewer paste tomato plants, and I can see the time coming where I won't plant many of them at all. If it is all about flavor, they cannot compete with the heirloom slicers and beefsteaks, and I'd like to find more hearts that do as well here as Brad's Black Heart, so I probably will start trying more of them. I've been trying lots of paste varieties that are new to me from Marianna's Heirloom Seeds that produce significantly larger fruit and have been pretty happy with some of those varieties as they produce fruit that is much larger than that from Heidi or Viva Italia. Whichever paste varieties I keep growing in the future likely will include some of these bigger varieties. I really like Speckled Roman because it does produce huge fruit that's easier/quicker to pick and process. Brad's Black Heart has produced huge fruit this year, including some doubles, and I like the meatiness of Dolly Parton tomatoes.

I love Cherry Falls and it has done equally well in the ground or in containers, so I hope you try it again. It has been a long time since I grew Tiny Tim and it was severely lacking in flavor and didn't produce very well, so wouldn't grow it again even if someone paid me to grow it. It is just as waste of space in our garden.

Cherokee Purple is great, and I like the closely-related Indian Stripe even better. It is slightly more productive and the fruit seems a little larger than CP most years, so if I had to choose only one of them to grow, I'd only grow IS. Luckily, I don't have to choose only one, so this year I grew Cherokee Purple, Cherokee Purple Heart, JD's Special C-Tex, Indian Stripe and Indian Stripe Burson. I'd hate to have to choose only one of those, but if I had to, I'd choose JD's Special C-Tex because it has the same great flavor as the others, but normally produces larger fruit and produces slightly earlier. It also has the best heat tolerance of them all. My JD's Special C-Tex often sets fruit deeply into July, long after the CP's have been shut down by the onset of our usual summer heat. Pruden's Purple, though, has flavor just as good as any of the ones I just listed, and I only planted two Pruden's Purple plants this year and wish I'd found space for more. So, there you have it----that is why my grow list is so long every year---why grow only Cherokee Purple when there's so many other similar ones that also have great flavor?

It is a good thing your garden is small because once you fall in love with the flavor of great varieties, it is easier to grow more than you need and more than you ever could want. I plead guilty to doing that every year, and it is only possible to do that because my garden is too big, which allows me to overplant everything. So, a smaller garden does, by necessity, keep a gardener from planting too many plants. That is not a bad thing.

Dawn

Thank you Dawn for your response - as always I learn so much!

I am trying to figure out a way to expand my garden to maybe 250 square feet of raised beds (just the raised beds, not the paths) but that's probably the most I can squeeze out of my tiny back yard, and the even tinier area that gets enough sun. I have 100 square feet now, so that would still be a big improvement. Maybe next year I can grow 20 or 25 tomato plants instead of 10. That's exciting :)

I am going to clip your post and also add some of these varieties to my grow list, particularly JD's Special C-Tex, Brad's Black Heart, and maybe Indian Stripe. The reason why I avoided these bigger slicers/beefsteaks before is because I thought they matured later and with all the trouble I've had getting any tomatoes at all, I figured they were out of my reach. Now that I know some of these mature even earlier than the paste ones, and can be used for canning too, I am encouraged to broaden my horizons :) I am guessing the plants are huge though?

I plan to grow Viva Italia again, as that one seems to work well for my little garden. Pretty sure now that you mentioned that they are smaller than Heidi that I have them figured out now :) The flavor is pretty good. How does Speckled Roman compare to Viva Italia, in terms of plant size and productivity?

Now that you mention it, Principe Borghese isn't terribly flavorful.... I diced up a gazillion of them tonight and made salsa and I'm a little underwhelmed... plus as you noticed they are a pain to cut up. The size of the plants and the productivity are impressive though. I haven't tried drying them yet, so good to know that improves the flavor. Maybe I'll just grow one for drying.

I definitely need to give Cherry Falls a chance. I think it could be a real winner for my little garden. What is the flavor like? Better than Principe Borghese? How about productivity?

Thanks again for all the recommendations and helpful info!

My major issue here is getting tomatoes big enough to set a large amount of fruit before hot weather sets in.
I have had good luck with an old variety called Sioux, Mule Team, Box Car Willie, Black Krim and especially Arkansas Travelers those little puppies are shorter vines but will bear in a Sahara Heat wave.
Bradley was also a good one but not so much in heat,

This year the newbies I tried Brandywine Sudduth Strain, Delicious, Super Sioux, Marianas Peace and Black from Tula and am not overly impressed with any. I never found a Potatoe Leaf variety that produced well here. So no new additions to the reglars

Every one has his taste in tomatoes, I prefer old tymey acidic style, smooth perfect round, non- beefsteak, vining type, regular leaf about 8oz to 1 pound and Red dangit- deep red. A tomato is supposed to be red. lol

This post was edited by cowdiddly on Tue, Jul 8, 14 at 23:35

Shelley,

You're welcome and, oh dear, I do believe I have become your tomato enabler. We need a 12-step program for this. To quote the Tomato King Jay, "I can stop any time I want to. I just don't want to."

More space means more room for tomatoes, so I'm not going to say "don't expand your garden" because I want for you to have as much fun every summer as I do.

The ones you mentioned with regard to wondering if they get big all are indeterminates so I guess they could be classified as huge, though no tomato plant seems huge once you've grown Tess's Land Race Currant, which I guess is the redwood of tomato plants. The last couple of times I grew Tess, it climbed to the top of an 8' tall cage and cascaded all the way back down to the ground. Once the limbs were touching the ground, I cut them off about 6" above the ground so they wouldn't lie on the ground and pick up diseases. The spread was 5-6' and I had to keep hacking it back to keep the pathway open. To me that is a huge plant----all other vigorous indeterminates are just big ones by comparison. They ones you asked about mostly get around 6' tall or taller---JD's Special C-Tex is pushing 7-8' right now and still flowering, but I don't think the flowers this week will set fruit because it is far too hot here. Brad's Black Heart seems to stop around 6' and Indian Stripe is about the same height as Cherokee Purple, or maybe a smidgen taller. It might be interesting to note that Cherokee Purple Heart, both plant and fruit, are incredibly popular with the grasshoppers this year. I have no idea why---not that it isn't a fine tomato, but how do the grasshoppers know? Why pick that plant out of the 100+ in the garden? On the other hand, I do not eat tomato plant foliage, so for all I know, maybe its foliage has the flavor preferred by 9 grasshoppers out of 10, or something like that. I wish the danged grasshoppers could answer my questions so I would know why they flock to one plant and ignore another. CPH was the first one they stripped down to bare stems, but I got great fruit from it before that. They ate the flowers, the leaves, and the green fruit. They didn't eat the stems, or at least not yet. Every time it tried to regrow foliage, they immediately ate it, while other plants right beside it (Chocolate Stripes and Pruden's Purple) remained virtually untouched. I suppose it is impossible to get into the mind of a grasshopper.

Speckled Roman produces fewer fruit per plant that most paste types, but they are very large and it also keeps pumping out fruit for along time, so the time savings is noticeable, both in harvesting and in processing. It tends to have foliar disease show up early and hit it hard, but it outlives, outlasts and outproduces the foliar diseases. By the time the plants really look crappy, I'm through canning tomatoes and moving on to other veggies. I can process a lot of Speckled Roman fruit in a pretty brief time. The flavor isn't so wonderful fresh, but is great in sauce. I've more or less ended my salsa-canning now, and will spend the next few days canning sauce, diced tomatoes and crushed tomatoes. Then, it is on to peppers and cukes. I'm always pushing, pushing, pushing....trying to finish up one major form of canning before moving on to the next.

The first year I grew Principe Borghese I found the flavor unimpressive and didn't think I'd grow it again. However, realizing that it was meant to be dried, I grew it the next year and dried them and discovered how tasty they could be. Imagine, though, all the work involved in cutting those up and drying them all summer long. It wears you out....but you can eat them by the handful like raisins in the winter, or rehydrate them a little and toss them into salads. Still, the more I can, the less time I have for little tiny maters, so it is off the list I'd rather dehydrate fewer big ones than tons of little ones.

Cherry Falls might be just about the prettiest tomato plant I've ever grown. I grew it in an urn type container, and I put three of them in a large urn the second year. The plants only get maybe 2 or 3' tall but the weeping or cascading branches covered with loads of fruit hang back down towards the ground---kinda like the limbs of a weeping willow. The fruit are really uniform in shape, size and color and are very tasty. They taste like an average red cherry tomato, but look prettier. As grown here, they aren't a deep rich scarlet red, it is more of a rosy pinkish-red. One year I grew about 15 kinds of cascading and very short upright cherry types in a cattle feed trough, and it was just as pretty as it would have been if filled with flowering annuals.I had Cherry Falls in there, and Tumbling Tom Red, Tumbling Tom Yellow, Tumbling Tom Yellow Jr, Rambling Red Stripe, Rambling Gold Stripe, Pear Drops, Little Sun, Terenzo, LIzzano, and oodles of others, mostly from Swallowtail Garden Seeds. There were a lot of very attractive plants in that trough, but Cherry Falls stole the show. You know how you'll look at a photo in a seed catalog/website and it shows a plant covered in fruit---and you've never had even your best-producing cherry tomato variety carry that sort of a load of fruit in real life (well, except for Ildi...Ildi does put out huge loads)----so you are pretty sure they have two of three plants in that photo masquerading as one or they've done some photoshopping.....well, Cherry Falls is the plant that, in real life, really does have all those loads and loads and loads of fruit on it. It makes SunGold and Sweet Million look like lazy sloths, though both of them do produce scads of fruit at one time. I had to keep my Cherry Falls plants in morning sun/afternoon shade because they produced so much fruit that there was more fruit than foliage and I was worried about sunscald since so many of the fruit were not protected by leaves. If I had to choose between Cherry Falls and Principe Borghese, there is no contest. Cherry Falls wins hands down.

Lately, I only grow SunGold, Black Cherry and Sweet Million for cherries. Again, I had cut the list which used to easily include 15 bite-sized varieties, in an effort to reduce all the hours a day I spend out there harvesting. Then, around June, I start wishing I had grown Ildi, Dr. Carolyn and Cherry Falls. Maybe next year I'll bring them back. Then, once I do, I'll say to myself "what about Rosalita? Coyote? Riesentraube? Sweet Chelsea?". See, it is conversations like this that get me in trouble.

I have told Tim about 15 times a day for the last month that I am planting fewer plants next year because I just cannot keep up with the harvesting and canning. You can imagine how much that statement amuses him, and it is precisely because he knows I'm a lot more likely to plant more tomatoes next year than fewer, based on recent history.

Dawn

This is my best year for tomatoes and I think the weather is a big part of the reason.

I'm thinking about expanding my garden also, but that's being tempered by having more tomatoes now than my Wife and I can deal with. She's not a canner, and is new to making salsa, so we are giving away a lot of tomato. In fact, she's a bit perturbed with me for creating this problem, dealing with this many tomatoes is not in her skill set.

Can they be stored in the refrigerator ? We can only eat so many BLT's :)

But next year could be entirely different and I we won't get hardly production at all . So I'm still gonna add space.

Tomatoes can be stored in the refrigerator. Some people do it all the time. I never do it. When you put a tomato into the refrigerator, the refrigeration changes both its flavor and texture. I don't like those changes, but some people don't mind them. Still, a refrigerated home-grown tomato still is better than any tomato you'll ever buy at the grocery store.

If you have a deep freeze, and y'all like cooking with tomatoes, you can wash them and put them in freezer zip-lock bags. In the winter, when you want to make pasta sauce, tomato soup, or anything else with tomatoes, you thaw them out and use them. Or, you can make tomato sauce using one of the little pouches of mix (ingredients you add to your tomatoes) made by Mrs. Wage's that is sold on the canning aisle. Then, instead of canning it, just put it into plastic freezer containers and freeze it. You really don't have to be a canner in order to preserve your tomatoes.

Giving away tomatoes will make you the most popular folks around.

Thank you all for the responses. It is always so interesting to read everyone's favorite varieties and why.

Dawn, I laughed at the 12 step program - its amazing how addictive all of this can be, and I have barely gotten my feet wet!

You have convinced me to give Cherry Falls another try for sure. I think I will plant them in my front beds, where they will get some shade in afternoon, and where their ornamental qualities can shine.

If I'm understanding you correctly, the reason why some of the paste tomatoes (like Viva Italia?) are smaller plants is because they are determinate. So most indeterminate plants are going to be larger. I have noticed that even Sun Gold and Black Cherry are much larger than the paste ones. That makes sense I guess. I can deal with some bigger plants if it means better production and flavor. I'm just trying to figure out what my best strategy is. I always assumed that the slicing/beefsteak types were harder to grow due to longer DTMs which are a liability in our climate, but you said your paste tomatoes actually matured later than some of your slicing/beefsteak ones. Now that I know that isn't true, and that I can use these more flavorful tomatoes for canning too, I think that's the direction I want to go. I definitely prefer the taste of the black/purple tomatoes. I will probably try a mix of both next year to see how it works for me.

That was interesting what you said about the grasshoppers devouring one tomato and leaving the rest untouched. I'm having problems with rabbits - they are eating all of my hot peppers (milder varieties, but still hot pepper types) and leaving the swiss chard right next to the peppers completely untouched. It makes no sense! With next year's garden expansion/reworking of the back yard, I'm determined to figure out a way to keep the rabbits from eating my vegetables!

Shelley,

Because our weather is crazy and the cold nights held on for so long, I spread out the planting of my tomato plants over about a 4 week period and the paste types were the last ones to get planted. If I had put all of them in the ground at the same time that I put the first two rows in, which was way back in late March, the pastes only would have been a week or two behind the others. I put in 20-25 tomato plants per week for 4 or 5 weeks. It was a very deliberate, slow, steady planting of tomato plants over time because even though we already were past our average last frost date (March 28th), I knew we were likely to have our last freezing night in May (and we did, on May 1st for the 6th year out of 7 that the last frost or freeze hit the first week in May). I knew I'd have to cover up the plants on cold nights, and it can be very time consuming to drag out the frost blankets and cover up the rows at night and uncover them in the morning, so I proceeded cautiously with planting.

Also, because a large number of the tomatoes are meant to be canned as salsa, I don't want ripe tomatoes for salsa until we also are harvesting garlic, green bell peppers, onions and jalapeno peppers. It can be tricky to time the ripening of the tomatoes for canning salsa to match up with the ripening of all the other ingredients, but I'm getting pretty good at it. If I had put all the plants in the ground in late March, I would have had tons of tomatoes for salsa a month before all the other ingredients ripened and that would have been a problem.

Most of the varieties I plant are in the 50-80 dtm range, so I just figure out what week I will have all the other salsa ingredients ripening and try to get our peak tomato harvest to hit at about the same time. It isn't really like I sit down with a calendar or lists and plan it all out. I don't. I just do it by "feel" or by intuition, but I try to get it right because having tomatoes ready for salsa making and canning long before the other ingredients are ripe and ready-to-use would be a problem. Not an insurmountable problem, but still a problem.

Most years, we get to eat a steady supply of tomatoes from the last week in April through around the end of May and, while we have lots of tomatoes, we can eat them up fresh. Then, all of a sudden, all the other types begin to ripen and our kitchen temporarily turns into a tomato processing factory---we can them, freeze them and dehydrate them.

If you (or I) had planted the paste tomato plants at the same time that the first 22 slicer, beefsteak and cherry tomato plants went into the ground in late March, the paste tomatoes wouldn't have been that far behind the others. Remember that when you plant---just by choosing when to transplant each plant into the ground, you have some control over how much of the harvest hits at once. A person who cans, dehydrates or freezes a lot of tomatoes would be happy with a big harvest hitting all at once, but someone who eats them mostly fresh wouldn't want to have too many at one time.

Plants are like people. Some are short. Some are tall. Some are really short. Some are really tall. In general, indeterminates get pretty big and most determinates don't....but some plants are semi-determinate or semi-indeterminate. There are some that are ISIs, which means the are Indeterminates with Short Internodes. Husky Red, Husky Cherry, Husky Gold and Better Bush are examples of ISIs. Then there are the ones that are dwarfs, as well as those bred to be more cascading (like Cherry Falls, Terenzo and LIzzano). In general, think of determinates being more bushy in their growth and indeterminates being more vining. Some indeterminate tomato plants, with proper support, nutrition and moisture, can grow almost endlessly and reach great heights. In their native habitat, they are understory perennials. Charles Wilbur at one time held the world record (and maybe he still does, but I don't know if he still does) for the world's tallest tomato (among other world records he held) and his world-record cherry tomato plant was around 27' tall. The photos in his book are astounding.

Most of the varieties I grow seem to easily reach 6' in height, and some reach 7' most years and some reach 8'. My tallest tomato cages are 8' tall, so nothing gets much taller than that. Plants that hit 8' and want to grow taller don't have the support to do so, so they just begin to cascade back down sort of like a weeping willow. JD's Special C-Tex gets pretty tall for me, and so does JetStar and Gary 'O Sena. You just learn as you go what is the typical height for each variety in your soil and your growing conditions in a typical year. I treat all tomato plants like short-season plants, putting them in the ground in March-May and having little interest in trying to keep them alive and producing after July. I suspect if I tried harder to keep them going all summer, they might get even taller than they do, but I have other fish to fry in July and August, in terms of harvesting food and putting it up. Between the heat, the lack of moisture here and the pests, I'd just as soon start over with new plants for fall, and just keep a plant or two from the spring planting producing all summer just to keep us in fresh tomatoes until the fall plants begin providing us with the fall harvest.

You even can grow very small tomato plant varieties in very small pots indoors in winter, though I've done it and don't really think it is worth the time and effort. Red Robin and Yellow Canary both grow well indoors in small pots as long as they have adequate lighting.

Rabbits eat as they please and seem to have particular favorites they prefer, and not all rabbits seem to like the same things. All that has worked for us is a really good fence. Every now and then a rabbit finds its way under or through the fence, but not often. We have the biggest rabbit population this year we've ever had, which is a sure sign the coyote population is down. (On the Texas side of the river last year, they had a severe outbreak of canine distemper in the raccoon population. I think it surely must have affected coyotes as well, and it must have had some effect on coons and coyotes on our side of the river too, because we've had a lot less of both this year...not that I am complaining about it, because I'm not. Fewer coyotes always means more bunnies though.) Since the bunnies are securely fenced out of our garden, I enjoy having them hopping around the yard. This year, it is not unusual to walk out the back door and have a dozen or more rabbits out there eating, drinking, (I put out pans of water for them in drought when the ponds and creeks are low or empty), playing.....watching little bunnies hop, run and play is almost as fun as watching lambs or kids. Once our cats are inside for the night, which is well before dark, the rabbits come out and have the run of the yard. They even just lie there on the lawn and look around----not really behaving that differently from the cats. If you walk out 100' or 200' from the house, you'll see a lot more rabbits. They really don't cause us much trouble. Sometimes they stand up on their hind legs and eat plants I have growing in molasses feed tubs in an unfenced area. Sometimes they eat plants I have growing on the garden fence, but usually they do not. I expect that there's enough wild food available in the fields that they maybe don't try real hard to get into our gardens. They also visit the compost piles, just like the deer, possums and coons do, looking for tasty tidbits. Also, they sometimes get some henscratch the chickens didn't eat, or cracked corn I put out for the mourning doves. Our bunnies normally arepeaceable little cutie-pies and not garden thugs, but it is the fence that has made them that way.

Some people have luck with spreading blood meal or human hair around the perimeter of their garden to keep the bunnies out. Some use electric fencing. Some use electrified poultry netting. Some have yappy little dogs that chase rabbits and bark at them. That doesn't work here where we are because we are so rural that little dogs left outside at night tend to disappear, likely taken by one wild thing or another.

I thought you garden was a potager that is fenced. Are the rabbits coming under, over or through the fence?

Dawn

Thanks Dawn, I'm gonna pass this on to my Wife.

And I was just in the garden pickin tomatoes, and was thinking, that my crop this year probably has more factors than just the weather. I think I may be seeing the result of lurking in this forum for the past three years. It hit me, that my garden looks nothing like it did four years ago. I've learned a lot here.

I'm using raised rows, I've done a lot of soil enhancement, and I have a rarely used drip irrigation system cause I've learned how to water.

I studied what varieties are popular in this forum and planted five varieties I've never planted before, Big Beef, Brandywine, Sun Gold, Black Cherry, and an Early Girl variation that Johnny's Seeds called New Girl.

I also started my plants from seed and got my seed from Johnny's Select, which I found through this forum.

So maybe, its not just the weather :) . An ole dog can learn new tricks.

You're welcome.

Well, heck, if lurking on the forum paid off for you, then I am thrilled. Don't you think, though, that posting and "talking" is more fun than just lurking? I do.

Years ago, I learned a whole lot from a guy named Bill P. who used to post as "GoneFishin'" on several forums, including the vegetable forum and the tomato forum. He lived in Texas and amended his garden with horse manure/stable bedding that he got from his daughter's horse barn. He had the most beautiful plants all the time. He grew the biggest and most beautiful onions I've ever seen and his tomatoes were just as gorgeous. He regularly posted "how to" threads showing how he did many different things, filled with photos and suggestions. He always encouraged the rest of us to try new things and to be open-minded about doing things differently from the way we'd always done them. He pushed us, ever so gently, to get out of our comfort zones and try something new or different. I could write a book about everything he taught me, and I know that George, Jay and few others here remember him and miss him as much as I do. I hope he knew how much he helped everyone and how much he was appreciated. We lost him far too soon. It is amazing how much one person like Bill P. can teach another, and then you multiply that by the thousands of people on Garden Web and there's just so many ideas and so much knowledge here on all the GW forums. I have been gardening my entire life and I still learn something new every single day here at Garden Web. I think that is pretty amazing. You cannot sit back and think "been there, done that, my way is the best way" because there are so many new ways, new ideas, new varieties and new gardening tools just waiting to be found and any (or all) of them could be an improvement of what someone has done their whole life. One way to find them is to read about them here on the forums. A great many of the wonderful tomato varieties (and other veggie varieties too) we grow in our garden were brought to our attention by other GardenWeb members. I tried drip irrigation, floating row covers, etc. because they were suggested by other Garden Web members.

I found Johnny's Selected Seeds on my own, though, when we lived in Texas and our son was very young, so GW doesn't get credit for that. The first time I ordered seeds from Johnny's, we ordered our toddler son a little red and yellow metal wheelbarrow. It probably was in the late 1980s and I think we paid about $25 for it, which seemed like a huge sum of money for a children's toy at the time. That little wheelbarrow has been used by many children and in recent years we've loaned it to friends to use with their grandkids, and each of them has returned it to us when the child outgrew it. To me, that one little wheelbarrow which has been used for about 27 or 28 years by a multitude of kids tells you all you need to know about the quality of Johnny's products. There is not another single item from our son's childhood that has been played with for over a quarter-century and never has been broken. I'll always be a Johnny's customer.

It is a good thing we old dogs can learn new tricks. I think it keeps us from becoming grumpy old dogs, and we get to share what we know with all the young pups. Isn't life grand?

Dawn