I tried Big Beef or one of its close relatives this past season, and it was not big. Maybe 1.5 inches in diameter. It tasted ok, nothing special.

I'm stickin' with open pollenated tomatoes. Not that I'm a snob or anything, I happily grow hybrid peppers.

Do you still grow the Cosmonaut Volkov, David?

My plants were really tested by 2 windstorms. Damaged they suffered the remainder of the 2014 season. Several of the heirlooms came through okay. The hybrids did okay. I really should have just pulled some of the heirlooms ...

I'm leaning towards giving Jet Star a try. (Apparently, I've had 40+ years to get around to this hybrid but one should never rush into anything. ;o) Avoiding the determinate varieties may not make much sense but I'd like to stay with the indeterminates.

I do grow determinate Legend. That open-pollinated type ripens late enuf the cool weather slows the process so that I get several weeks of harvest. Still, it never gets to be an 8 ounce slicer - more of an Early Girl size.

Steve

Steve, I haven't tried Cosmonaut Volkov - but I just looked at the description and its intriguing. I dunno - I have never had much luck with determinants. I used to grow Celebrity, but thats sort of a very large determinant. I think half the tomato plants grown around here are Early Girl. Usually I end up with short foot-high plants covered in heavy fruit that need some kind of support, and the fruit ends up touching the ground and the slugs, squirrels, etc. end up damaging a lot of it.

As for the wind - here we'll get 4 or 5 days of 40 mphish winds coming in off the desert in June right after I've set out the plants. That dries 'em out pretty quickly, and in many cases, both tomatoes an peppers are stunted for the rest of the season or they get some disease and they're just toast. I've gotten in the habit of burying most of the stem on the tomatoes, leaving only a few inches up, and then mulch them heavily with grass clippings. That seems to help. But I suspect that doing so is also putting back the time I can pick the first ripe tomatoes. As for the peppers, I have them in containers now and just move them into a sheltered spot. We will get winds in July when the monsoon shows up, big gusts around thunderstorms, but nothing you'd call a wind storm.

Right now, waiting for the rains to start. Did you get walloped with this big storm hitting the PNW?

Vorlon!

Okay, I knew it was something from Space!

The New Fedco catalog came and I see its description of that there Russian and have to wonder if it would be worth a try.

The recent storm didn't amount to much here. We are left with fog ... 32o morning low and now working on a 33o afternoon high ..! (May as well be living on the coast. ;o)

Steve

There are larger Boys and Girls. . .

Regardless how the weather turned out yesterday, I think the European meteorologists have come up with a useful growing season climate category for my gardening -- Continental Mediterranean.

I wonder if I could find enough to order at Seeds from Italy for this one. The description "mid-early tomato variety" sounds like a 72 day tomato.

Steve

Here is a link that might be useful: Pomona F1