1.Watering tomatoes in peat pots by soaking them in a tray of water works wonderfully, and keeps them moist for at least a couple days indoors(though most the time I was raising my seedlings I watered via spray bottle, which took about 20 mins to do...lol Did this idea at the very end, which is when I found out it worked awesome and took SO much less time. Lesson learned.)

2.Even if you plant different tomato varieties close together, if they cross pollinate, it doesn't bother the tomatoes that year, just the seeds. If you plant a Marianna's Peace tomato, it'll give you true MP tomatoes, just the seeds that next year might be a newly created hybrid! ;) (Fact I learned last night!)

3.If you soak peat pots in water before planting, the pots come over easy peasy. -This ain't no joke! They just peeled right off, and yes, some of the roots slipped right through(someone had mentioned that would happen)! :)

4.On average, you can expect your tomato seedlings to be one inch tall for every week they are old. i.e- a five week old plant would be about five inches tall.

5.You can bury leggy tomato stems under ground and they'll develop more roots from it.

6.A blend of tomatoes tend to taste best in sauces.

7.You can pick tomatoes once they blush at the blossom end, and once ripe indoors they'll taste like they would even if you had left it on the plant. Actually, by what I've read, maybe even better as there can be more problems the longer you leave the tomato on the plant(bugs eat it, water the plant too much making the tomato taste watery, etc.)

8.Can't say every bit of this one, so every opinion about the different tomato varieties I've read. ;)

9.Purple/dark leaves can be the plant having trouble with phosphorus deficiency(whether not taking up b/c soil too cold or not enough in soil), what wind burn looks like, and quite a few other disease symptoms and fixes.

So yeah, this is the main info I've absorbed. I love how this forum's so dang active! I read this forum more than any other site. If I'm every bored I come check out this place. And at least this way I'm learning versus watching Youtube videos or something. Hahaha! ;) How 'bout ya'll? Anything you've learned that you'd like to share? :D

I like the active nature of this forum too. There are many enthusiastic and helpful people here...

One important thing I learned is to plant in a very light soil-less mix...plant roots like to spread right out and a compacted soil will not produce large healthy plants. And, that a lot of problems people have with their plants are due to watering issues.

... how to save tomato seeds by the fermentation method. And I saved some. And they grew!

... how to start tomatoes from seed -- and they grew!

... not to use dirt in containers.

... what Perlite is for.

... that some tomatoes have potato leaves. Never saw one before 2008, I swear!

... about the many different ways to support tomatoes.

... that I'm not the only person who can hear hornworms munching.

... about several good sources of tomato seeds.

... about Tatiana's TOMATObase, Ventmarin's database, Cornell's Late Blight pages, and many, many other sources of good info.

... about many, many -- too many! -- tomato varieties to grow. I could mention how long my List is ... but no one would believe it.

... that for some reason, I'm a total pushover for tomatoes with an Italian background. And tomatoes from Latin America.

... that I could actually enjoy a tomato that isn't red.

I was doing a lot of things wrong and I had developed some bad gardening habits. I always had tomatoes to eat, but not as much variety, not as early, and not as many as I have now from the same amount of plants.

My major violations were:
1.) Over-watering
2.) Blindly adding amendments without first getting a soil test
3.) Over-fertilizing
4.) Planting too close
5.) Using stakes instead of Florida Weave or Cages

In addition to what I was doing wrong, I learned some good best practices:

1.) Foliage pruning and mulching to control Early Blight and other foliage diseases.
2.) Mulching heavy to keep soil temperature and moisture levels consistent (with the hopes of preventing or limiting BER).
3.) When supplemental watering is required, water deeply to promote a larger deeper root system.

The single most important thing I learned is that... Not all tomatoes are red. It seems funny now, but growing up, all we grew were burpee hybrids from seed, all of which were red. Red beefsteaks, round reds, and cherries. There is an amazing variety out there, and I now look forward to trying new varieties each year.

I originally started growing different colors as a novelty, but found that Aunt Ruby's German Green is not only different looking, but is a damn good tasting tomato. I grew some yellows (Golden Queen to name one) and gave them away as gifts and now I get requests for them, heh.

A little off topic, but out of curiosity, does the dont overwater rule apply to pepper plants as well?

@Rabbit-LoL! Love it. ;) But yeah, I forgot to put that! Gosh, I try so hard to not talk my husband's ear off about my plants, but it's so hard when you're so happy and excited...or nervous and worried(damping off scare anyone? ;) ). I love talking plants, even though this is my first year gardening. ESPECIALLY tomatoes! My husband is quite perplexed as to my unusually high interest in a vegetable that we're not even big eaters of. Well, fresh anyways. But we use a ton of pizza sauce and also other tomato products(soup, paste, etc.). I think I might have told him, but out of all my plants I'm most excited for tomatoes because there's so much variety! Like yeah, there's probably a dozen heirloom broccoli you could find on the internet, but tomatoes, there's thousands! I wanna be a collector/taste tester of every heirloom variety! ;) That's why, like you're saying, this forum's great because all us tomato fans can chat it up.

@Missingtheobvious-About the potato leaf varieties. I was all perplexed when some of my tomatoes came up normal and others were potato leaf. I had read about it previously, but hadn't seen pics, and I hadn't thought to check what kind of leaves the varieties I was planting had. I was all wondering when the normal leaves would come! lol Weird thing is, I don't know if it's related to the varieties I chose or what I'm fixin' to say, but this year two of my varieties of reg. leaf looked awful, had issues, etc., but I hardly lost sleep over the potato leaf varieties. Again, I don't know if it was related to varieties or not, but I can't help but now be more partial to the potato leaf tomatoes. ;)

@Homegarden-That's so cool that you had never had a tomato with a different color than red but now you're branching out. ^_^ I guess I too, when I think about it, hadn't known there was different color tomatoes until this year. I have never tasted a different colored tomato, but I have Sun Gold, Sunsugar, and Paul Robeson(or Rambling Red Stripe, label issue) growing this year, so it'll be neat to see if I taste a difference. :) That's cool you got some people hooked on your Golden Queen so they request 'em. I hope to have a taste test this year for friends and family with my twelve varieties(and others if friends or family wanna donate a tom or two to the mini event). If I got requests as to what to grow next year, I'd be so flattered! ^_^

@Cdon-I hope that's not true about pepper plants! I've been trying to water more because I thought I had read somewhere that, by doing so, you create a hotter pepper. But maybe someone else might know for sure. By the way, like the slogan. I'll have to remember it.

2. Septoria and bacterial speck and early blight, late blight - I just knew before if my tomatoes were sick but not what it was or what to do (though last year it was too late to do anything).

3. What a "breaker" tomato is (actually, I think that was over on Harvest, but it was Dave who told me - Dave has a wealth of information!) and how to ripen them. Also on Harvest but worth mentioning here - pickled green tomatoes are fantastic!

Angela.t,
When the peppers actually set fruit, excess watering makes for less hot peppers. Just as too much water with tomatoes can make for less tasty fruit, and cracked fruit too. Of course when torrential rains come, there's nothing you can do.
Remy