I am looking for Sun Gold tomato plants grown from purchased seed that you may have available for postage or trade. My seedlings died and I would love replacements for this season. I have various flower seeds, better boy tomato seedlings and lamb's ear to trade.

I would like to have some tomato seeds but I don't have SunGold (F1). You may have a hard time finding them for trade. Since they are hybrid you cannot save seeds from them. Most people just keep the extras for next year because the seeds will be good for several years. www.wintersown.org has a variety of seeds available. A lot of them are very desirable varieties. The selection changes frequently and she does not always have SunGold. Most are free for the first 6 kinds but since the SunGold is a hybrid you have to make at least a $5.00 donation to get them. With the donation you can get a total of 10 varieties. Do a Google search for tomato seed sources. A lot of places have economical seeds but no minimum order. Be sure to check shipping cost. Some companies charge an arm and a leg! Margaret

Sungold tomatoes are an F1 hybrid. They do not come true from saved seeds. A search on the Growing from Seed forum or even Google will provide more information. Some people who do save the seeds report that they produce a good tasting red cherry tomato, but they are not as good as Sungold.

zornitzayoung, why not just plant a single plant and don't remove any suckers? There's no reason to prune except lack of space. If there's room for two plants, planted in the same hole, with one stalk each, then why not a single plant with 2, 3, or 4 stems? I should add that I was raised to prune to the main stem, but realized how severely that limited yield. Then again, I suppose there might be an advantage to 2 separate plants if the season is particularly short. The second plant would bear a week or two before the oldest sucker on a single plant would. You don't give a location or a USDA zone, so I can't tell if that might be the reason. === A few years back, due to family illness, I didn't start my own seeds. The plants I bought were from Bonnie, and many had suckers coming up through the planting mix (which didn't bother me -- and they were pretty determined suckers!). The Black Krim turned out to be two plants of different varieties. When I realized that, I gave them more water than the other tomatoes, but for whatever reason, toward the end of the summer, the BK died. I don't know how typical that is when two plants are started together and barely pruned. [The tomato that survived -- a dark pink egg that didn't match anything Bonnie was selling that year -- was one of the few highlights of a difficult year.]