Sungold is a hybrid. The seed won't come true when saved. This hybrid..........knobody has been able to growout 1 exactly like it's parent. I didn't mean to change the subject, but I don't want you to be disapointed in the outcome if your looking for the exact flavor of Sungolds. Ehem, cough cough. It reseeded truly in my garden for several years. And I posted about it for several years too. There appears to indeed be some stable strains. When it comes to hybrid tomatoes reseeding truly best advice is always to never say never ;-) Personally, I am hugely against passing on horticultural dogma--dogma does nothing except prevent people from learning by doing. And if anyone would like to growout Sungold F1 please visit Your Choice Tomato SASE for the details. You can growout the seeds, save them, grow again year after year and as always, save the best of the best to obtain a reseeding pure strain. BTW, this process is called dehybridizing and ultimately you create through selection an OP strain that matches the flavor, size and vigor of the original F1. T Here is a link that might be useful: YCTS List and info.

Beautiful pics Becky! I grow all those too. Lemon cucumbers are the very best cukes and Julietes 'son muy deliciosa!' Julietes make the best sun dried tomatoes (I use my oven set on 200 degrees). Oil them with Extra Virgin Olive oil and bake until leathery but still juicy. Freeze them for later use, if they don't all get eaten first. I really do love you photos. Artistically arranged in that beautiful colander. I can see all the glorious Temecula sunshine shining into your kitchen. Lovely. (Waaah...makes me homesick). ~Annie

OP, you are in zone 8 and I am in 9, however, I had the same problem (which turned out to be a non-issue!) Not only did mine seem to be "stunted" as you said, but my seedlings also essentially "died" and grew back. The "germ leaves" (forgive my current lack of proper terminology) turned yellow and died, and I thought all was lost, but then about a week later, not only did they start growing back, but they grew back with vigor. Now they have 3 sets of leaves each, and are moving along very nicely. So my advice is to just wait it out and see what happens. Start a few more "replacements" perhaps, just in case, but as long as you keep your current ones from freezing weather, they will turn out fine (: Honestly though, I would get them out of that nasty miracle grow ASAP, regardless of what happens. That will not help them at all, trust me. Get them in some nice "clean" (organic) soil, and begin feeding them NATURAL fertilizer when the weather begins to warm up a bit more.

Hi Sheepie! Lots of rain has been falling north and northwest of us--has it been raining at your place the last couple of days? Hank, I've never used dental floss, but then I cage my tomatoes and don't generally have to tie anything. I just poke the ends of the branches back inside the cages when they try to "escape". I use various types of material in the garden to tie plants to fences, stakes or other supports, including jute twine, cotton twine, green velcro ties bought in a roll at the garden center, and old panty hose. I am a little concerned that something as thin as dental floss might cut little grooves into tender green plant tissue, though. Sheri, I think I will do another post on bugs in the garden in general, but let me say a couple of things quickly here. 1) Spiders are the absolute best thing to have in the garden because they are there for one reason and one reason alone and that is to eat insects. The spiders are your friend! Well, one year I had black widows in the garden, and I had to get rid of them, but other harmless spiders took their place and that was fine. 2) If you have a lot of pest bugs in the garden, you need more bugs and not less. Are you seeing any lady bugs or green lacewings? If so, that is great. Like spiders, the lady bugs and green lacewings are there to eat pest bugs. I bought those little bags or cartons of lady bugs at nurseries several years in a row and released them into my garden. I now have a healthy population of ladybugs and no longer have to buy any. The ladybugs and the green lacewings (I only had to release them one year to build a good population) leep most pests under control. 3) Most ants in general are good for the garden. They scavenge and remove dead bugs, bug eggs, etc. Some of our tiny native ants prey upon imported fire ants. I have two harvester ant beds right outside my garden and they are a huge help to me. I do treat with Safer organic fire ant bait for fire ants in the garden. Try to think of ants as an important part of the natural pest control system. 4) If your tomatoes have obvious insect bites on them, I would look for green tomato hornworms (I have had one monster-sized one strip an entire plant bare this week, including eating most of 4 tomatoes that were the size of tennis balls) or for stinkbugs. It is just about stinkbug time here. 5) Crickets and grasshoppers are a very complicated problem. I'll go into them on a separate post specifically about them, so it will be easy for someone to find later on if they are doing a 'search' of this forum. 6) Flies are a nuisance. I have never worried about them or tried to get rid of them, but then I am in horse and cattle ranch country where the flies outnumber the humans about a billion to one. 7) Caterpillars are complicated. The easy way to deal with them organically is to use Bt, a bacteria that kills any caterpillar, moth or butterfly that comes into contact with it. Bt is an organic product and is often found in products labeled 'Caterpillar Killer'. Because I love the butterflies and moths, I quit using Bt several years ago. Whether to use BT or not is an individual choice and I respect anyone's right to use it to rid their landscape of caterpillars. I prefer to not use it on our property, though, and just handpick caterpillars that have become a problem. It is easy to see bugs in the garden and get panicky and want to get rid of them all. I understand that. I have been there myself. When I was a young child, my dad sprayed DDT and other poisons to rid his garden of bugs. When I was a teenager, my dad sprayed religiously with Kelthane to get rid of the spider mites on his tomatoes. When I was a young woman in my 20s, with a family, home and garden of my own, my dad used Sevin dust as a multi-purpose bug killer. I tried his methods when I was in my mid- to late-20s and found they really didn't work. I started looking for a better way. It took me a few years, but I finally got it right. I'll describe it in the post I write in a few minutes about bugs. I'm not saying my way is the best way, but it is the best way for me and for all the critters who share this piece of land my family calls home. Dawn