lizbeth thanks I used a large container but to be honest I just loved it to life I guess. I cut off the stems that splintered from the stem and put them in the bottom of the pot to rot. I also kept a look out for caterpillars, it is a monster now. oh when it was young I put a little molasses in with the 2 gallon watering pale like two tablespoons

Wow Ed! Stupice for the end of June!!! When did you plant them? I should have grown Stupice again, but was disheartened when they succumbed to some sort of fungal disease last year and decided to give them a miss this year. I was excited about my new early F1 (Yellow Pear derivative) but the taste just wasn't there. Maybe the next ones will taste better, and they might be improve with some seeds left in! I scraped them all out to ferment and save! Linda.

There are many varieties of tomatoes with a wide varieties of tastes out there. Check around and start seedlings from seed early next year to get some varieties that you may like a lot better than Big Boy. It may be an acquired taste, and not everyone likes the same thing. All my first tomatoes were too bland for my liking this year, probably because of two months of unrelenting rain. Now that it has stopped raining, the flavors have improved a lot, more concentrated and like they should be. To me, there seems to be a consensus of opinion that Brandywine is one of the best tasting tomatoes out there, if you grow it I might suggest the Brandywine Sudduth which produces a large pink tomato. Cherokee Purple has become the favorite of my Wife's and my 84 year old cantankerous organic gardening neighbor over the back fence, Tom. Two that I grew this year that were productive with big tomatoes but were just a mite bland for my personal prefence is the new Burpee Porterhouse, and one called Ugly out of Florida. The list could go on and on, and that is one of the things that make it interesting if you get into checking the threads here and the seed catalogs on line, or hard copy and starting from seed for the selections from such a wide variety. Surely you can find one or more that gives you the real joy of a good home grown tomato. Beyond that, there are ways to enjoy them cooked, or to enhance a sandwich and turn one from mediocre to fantastic. Perehaps you could find one or two real "girlie" tomatoes that somewhat impersonate a bland store bought tomato and work up to the real thing! I do not know if they have tried any taste bud transplants yet or not ! ":^( Just kidding man, your taste of the cucumbers that you grew may encourage you on your quest for a great tasting tomato. Good luck and keep us posted Scottlk. That little striped watermelon looks intriguing. Bill P.

I do have Japanese beetles, but they are bothering my roses and bramble patch and haven't been spotted on my orchard trees at all. Whatever it was got the top half of my filberts since I posted. Maybe it is deer? I just don't get why the stems are still fine. I'll put some netting on in case, because that works with my deer. I'll use a more general-purpose insecticide for it, too. The beetles are probably about to find the orchard this year anyway. I like to try spinosad first if it's a kind of caterpillar, but I just don't know what this awful pest is.