Busy1, Now you break it to us that gardening is work? Now? Where were you 40 or 50 years ago when my dad was teaching me it was all fun and games? Seriously, gardening is a lot of work, but it is the kind of work I like to do. Working in the garden is a lot more fun than going to work at any place of employment to earn a paycheck. I know you'd rather be at home working with the cows or in the garden or in the greenhouse because it is a more enjoyable and fulfilling kind of work. I hope you still aren't working all those long, long days at your job. It doesn't leave much time for anything else important like gardening. Jess, Well, it doesn't matter where you got the idea because now you've reprogrammed your mind from May to April planting. You're not in any trouble if your tomato plants already have blooms. I put mine in the ground with both blossoms and fruit on them, but you do have options: 1) If your main goal is early fruit (as mine is with the 20 early plants every year), leave the blossoms on the plants and they'll be fine. The tradeoff, though, is that the plant is dividing its energy between making some vegetative and root growth and some fruit. So, you'll have temporarily smaller plants and somewhat slower-growing plants since some energy is already going into the fruit. Some of the determinate plants I have in the ground (I think I have 4 determinates out of those 20 early plants) already have 5 to 7 fruit per plant, and some of those small tomatoes are already about the size of ping pong balls or slightly larger. Those plants won't make much vegetative growth until these first few fruit have ripened, but I don't care---I plant these early determinate plants specifically for early fruit. As far as I am concerned, if they never make another bit of growth, they will have done their job by producing tomatoes for us to eat in April and May. Normally, after I harvest those early fruit, the plants put on a growth spurt and produce another nice round of fruit. If they don't, it doesn't bother me, because my home-grown plants that go into the ground a bit later will be making lots of fruit by then. 2) Your second option is just to pinch off the blossoms as you transplant your plants into the ground. Why would you choose that option? Well, it would push the plants back a bit into more vegetative growth which would allow them to get bigger and stronger before setting fruit. However, once the plants are large enough that they are starting to flower, they are going to flower again fairly soon even if you pinch off the blooms. With this option, you're trading in the prospect of earlier fruit for larger, healthier plants. To me, in our climate, Option 1 is more appealing but that's because I am a tomato hog and want fruit early and want it often. In OK, there's always the possibility that the summer heat sets in too early and shuts down tomato production almost before it begins, so I hate to sacrifice a single bloom that will produce a fruit. There's nothing worse than having big, beautiful, healthy tomato plants just starting to bloom and set fruit in May and then---WHAM! The temperatures heat up 10-20 degrees higher than average for that time of the year and the blooms start falling off the plants without setting fruit. That happens here about 1 year out of every 3 or 4, and it is difficult to know which year it will be. We had that early onset of heat in 2011, but had the opposite thing in 2012---a last frost the first week of March, so everyone who rushed their plants into the ground early in March had incredible harvests in June, much earlier than is typical. The problem is that we never know at seed-starting time if our last frost will be in March, April or May. Hence, we develop ways to work around the weather we have---whatever it may be. The erratic nature of our spring weather makes it impossible to know with a certainty when to start seeds or even when to transplant plants into the ground. There are just too many variables involved. In order to keep my plants from growing too quickly when they are germinating and starting indoors on the light shelf, I keep that room cool---around 60-65 degrees. This usually involves closing off the heating vent to that room and keeping the curtains closed in order to keep the room as cool as possible. I normally move the tomato plants out to the greenhouse when they are only 2 or 3 weeks old, mainly because I need to free up room on the light shelves to start other seeds, but also because the greenhouse can be kept cooler, in general, than the room inside. You can manage your greenhouse in such a way that the plants do not grow too quickly by (a) using shadecloth--the one I use is a 50% shadecloth, and (b) opening doors and vents, if you have them, to allow the greenhouse-heated air to flow out and to let cooler air flow in. It is easy here to have greenhouses get too hot during the day---without shadecloth and with both doors and all 4 vents closed, my greenhouse can hit 130-145 degrees on a sunny day in winter or spring---and it can happen by 9 or 10 a.m. The first thing I do most days when I go outside is to open the greenhouse doors and check the temperature on the Min-Max thermometer in the greenhouse. Then, depending on what the temperatures are like both inside the greenhouse and outside in the open air, I can open or close vents and doors as needed to keep the air temperatures cool enough. It is easy for anyone to assume that when raising tomato transplants inside a greenhouse, the bigger the better, right? But that's not true. You want to put tomato plants in the ground that are the right size and not too large and not too far along in the blooming process, if they are blooming at all. Keeping the plants in the greenhouse cool enough that they make good growth but not rampant growth is your goal. Larger plants often don't transplant as well and their growth will stall after you transplant them into the ground. It pains me so say that, but it is true. Understand that I have two separate sets of plants for a very deliberate reason---the early ones purchased the minute they hit the stores are intended to give early production. By having them, I am assured we will have early fruit to eat, and that prevents me from trying to rush my own home-grown plants into the ground before they are ready for it. Then, there's the plants I raise from seed, which mostly are heirloom types. I like to put my home-grown tomato transplants in the ground when they are between 6-12" tall and have 6 to 8 true leaves, and no flowers and no fruit. If I have timed their planting carefully, they are going to be that size at just the right time. Smaller plants like that which aren't blooming or setting fruit will spend their first few weeks in the garden making a great root system and making lots of lovely vegetative growth that will support large crops of fruit later on. By having the two sets of plants, I fulfill my dual goals of having some early fruit for sandwiches and salads and other forms of fresh eating, and then of having huge crops later on for fresh eating, sharing with family and friends, and for canning, dehydrating and freezing. Greenhouse management is so much more than just keeping the greenhouse above freezing at night....you have to learn how to use it as a tool to give you the plants you want/need at the size/age you want and need for them to be at a specific time. I think this is my fourth spring to use my greenhouse and there has been a lot of trial and error involved in learning how to use it in the way that works best for me, my plants and with my specific goals in mind. As you gain experience with how quickly tomato plants do or don't grow in a greenhouse, you'll learn how to time your seed-starting so you get the plants you want at the size you want by planting time. I don't heat my greenhouse at night, but use several passive heating methods to keep it from 10-15 degrees warmer at night than the outside air. That means my plants can get pretty chilly at night, but for most plants that is good---it keeps them from getting too big too quickly. Pepper plants stay indoors in the house until the night air has really stabilized because being exposed to cold temperatures too early in their lives can make them non-productive or poor in production for months thereafter. Next week isn't too early for corn in my garden. I take my soil temperatures with a thermometer so know exactly when they reach the right range to plant. It also depends on what kind of corn you're growing. Some of the newer supersweet types need warmer soil temperatures than more traditional sweet corn varieties. Check your corn variety and know what type of corn it is and what type of soil temperature that type of corn needs for germination. It is still too early in most of OK for successful corn seed germination of some of the pickier supersweet types, but at my end of the state, it is fine now to sow seeds of old-fashioned "normal" corn. Bermuda grass never goes away, especially if you are in the countryside surrounded by fields of bermuda pastures/hayfields that often send their seed flying through the air. I've been digging invading bermuda grass out of my veggie garden for 15 years now. Granted, there is less and less of it every year, but it still pops up here and there. I try to dig it up as soon as I see it, being careful to dig deeply and get all the stolons and roots removed. Bermuda grass is evil. Dawn

Hello, I am a little crazed about the OSU Blues and would love to try growing them and doing some cross-breeding. This year will actually be my first year cross-fertilizing tomatoes. Since I've been entranced by the OSU blues ever since I heard of them [just last year] I hope to be able to experience them this year. (I know it's a little late for this request.) I have over 30 heirloom seeds currently and am happy to email a list if anyone has Blue seeds they're willing to trade. (I also have many heirloom non-tomato seeds) THANKS!

Looking for Tomato seeds: "Indigo Rose",Tomato P20 Blue (P20 Blue tomato, OSU Blue Tomato),"Black Galaxy" tomato from Israel,"Tomatoberry" cherry tomato,"Red Target" tomato,any other unusual tomatoes:small cherry type tomatoes,or unusual color tomatoes. I have alot's of different tomato varieries,many russians.

The line is segregating. What you really want is the smaller one. However, since one of the main genes that has to do with the fruit being purplish is dominant you should consider some of the larger ones because they could be heterozygous this season and produce a homozygous line next year. You can try to see if you get an intermediate expression - I did but Im not sure if that is because of the other gene or incomplete dominance. If you want to try to differentiate the larger ones do 2 things; keep them in high light AND cool. That makes the purple express more. You might notice a subtle difference between then. Maybe not as dramatic in the leaves by rather the petioles and stems. You should be able to notice some purple specks at the base of the trichomes on careful inspection. So you could look at one of those, and if it shows some purple fruit in summer save and try to find a segregating homozygous one next year. Remember that fruit have to be exposed to direct light to color well so either pick early and then leave in bright light and/or prune to let fruit get direct sun. The purple actually protects them from the sun. Here is a link that might be useful: http://www-plb.ucdavis.edu/labs/rost/tomato/Leaves/leafanat.html