You pick a GWR by feel. When growing a new GWR variety I wait till it they have some give and are no longer firm. Just like other colors each variety will have a point where they taste the best. After picking a few and trying them at different points of ripeness you will determine where to pick each. Some tend to be better when softer. But I always start out trying a new GWR variety when it has give. You never want to wait till one gets to what I call the mushy point. Hard for me to explain. But after you have picked and ate a few you will be able to tell fairly easy. Most varieties will have some color change. A few don't have much at all. I have grown ARGG. It is a good GWR but doesn't usually do well here. Emerald Green is my favorite GWR. I lost most of my GWR's to the hail. I am growing Cherokee Green Pear. Jay

Thank you all for the responses. I did wait about 8 minutes even though the recipe says 5, so that was the problem. I know because I made it again (just had to see if I could do it! I will freeze a lot of it)(found a different recipe, but for the same size pan) and turned it out the instant it came out the oven. It came out perfectly! I have made it in a cast iron skillet when I was teenager at my grandmothers house... I don't own one, but maybe it's time to consider buying one! The ugly one tasted OK, but it was dry... I just pour milk over it when I want a piece. Gldno1, I also tried to stop baking (and stop attending this forum) in an effort to lose weight. I was still just as fat, just got sad on top of it. I'd rather be plump and happy than skinny and miserable! I enjoy baking (and this forum) and cannot stop!

Kelsey, You're welcome. 1. I do think you figured out that the lack of hardening off was the main issue. The gray spotting on the leaves likely resulted from that. This sort of damage to a plant is known variously as physiological damage or environmental damage and usually results from an indoor-raised tomato plant being placed outdoors permanently into conditions it is not strong enough to handle. You don't see as many photos of it online for ID purposes because each and every case of environmental damage can look different. I'd suggest you just chalk it up to a lesson learned and move on. Do not criticize or shame yourself. There is no shame in being new at something and at having to learn a few lessons the hard way. We've all been there, done that, and we survived (even if our plants did not) and moved on. Some rainy day we should start a "true confessions" thread where everyone can admit their various "mistakes" and tell us how they've killed plants accidentally. I could fill pages all by myself. Part of becoming an experienced gardener involves (sadly) killing plants and it's all good because we learn from each experiences. I believe that Texas A&M's Tomato Problem Solver Webpages do feature a photo of physiological damage. I'll see if I can find it and link it below but it is only one example. If you had 100 people with tomato plants that suffered this type of damage, you could get 100 different photos and none of them might be exactly the same as the damage presents in many ways. Tan or gray bleached out spots, ranging from tiny to huge, are a common symptom though. 2. This is a misconception that Oklahoma has only one season---hot, hot, hot. Or, maybe two--Tornado Season and Hot, Hot, Hot. Ha! We have 4 seasons here just like everyone else, and sometimes (especially in early to mid-spring) we have all 4 seasons in one day. In my years here in OK (we've lived here since 1999) I have spent more time trying to protect plants than on any other single garden task. This year has been especially erratic and especially trying for gardeners trying to harden off plants. Even when plants are partially hardened off, if you have to move them back indoors because, let's say, late March brings you two late snowstorms, guess what? If the plants were back inside for even just 2-4 days, they can lose their hardened off status and you get to start all over again from Day 1. I've started over more times this spring than I can count. I keep waiting for that perfect Spring where I can harden off plants in 1 week without taking any steps backwards and it hasn't happened yet. It is just something we have to deal with. 3. Sandy Loam is great. I wish I had started out with sandy loam. So, at least you are starting out with soil that likely drains well. This is important. Poor drainage is hard on many kinds of plants, and tomatoes are very sensitive to it. So, Yay for you for having great soil! 4. In the future, you'll increase your odds of success if you use a breathable covering. I use floating row cover. I was a slow learner on this one. I first read about floating row cover in Dr. Sam Cotner's amazing book on growing vegetables in Texas, where I was born, grew up and lived until moving to OK. I read about it in, I am pretty sure, the 1980s. I laughed. I said I was never going to spend our money on some sort of flimsy, lightweight material to cover up plants. Plants don't need to be covered, I said. I. Will. Never. Do. This. I am totally ashamed that I was so stupid back then. Flash forward to the 1990s and I started to get a little smarter (finally) after finding the weather in OK was much more rapidly changing than the weather where I'd lived in Texas. I bought my first row cover. Now I have tons of it. Tons and tons. I have become the poster child for using floating row cover. I cover up plants to protect them from very cold temperatures and frost and freezing. I use lightweight row cover to protect plants at times from some types of insects. I use row cover and bird netting to protect plants from hailstorms. I love the stuff. It comes in different weights that offer different degrees of light transmission and freeze/frost protection. I love the stuff. But, back before I started using row covers, I used old bed sheets and, on colder nights, blankets (albeit, with some sort of structure to keep them from crushing the plants). With row cover or bedsheets, even though they are breathable, air can heat up beneath them so I always use supports (usually low tunnel hoops made of PVC or EMT) to hold the row covers above the plants. While you can let the lighter weights of row covers float directly on top of the plants, I prefer to have a lot of air space between the plants and the covers so I suspend them above the plants. In our wind, row covers that float can cause abrasions to the foliage by repeated wind movement. Oh, and row covers that are not well-anchored to the ground can float right out of your garden and into the neighbor's barbed wire fence where they then become the row cover equivalent of cole slaw (because they are shredded into pieces). Another lesson learned. Row covers are hard to use if your cats and dogs think they are pet hammocks. Guess how I learned this? A glass bowl even propped up, could have acted similarly to a magnifying glass in sunny weather, so you probably should remember that in the future and use something else. Maybe a cat hammock. (grin) 5. Gray spots that start at the end of leaves and spread sounds more like physiological or environmental damage than disease. Hope that gives you some reassurance that a soil-borne disease likely was not the culprit. So, now you've survived first grade in the Tomato Seedling School of Hard Knocks. I'm sorry it was such a disappointing experience for you and hope you can laugh it off and move on to bigger and better and more successful gardening ventures. I wish you lived here near me. I have a greenhouse full of tomato plants, ranging from huge to tiny (not my fault, I blame the tiny ones on a later start and horrible weather, and I am grinning as I type this statement) and I'd load you up with replacement plants....which all are going to Paula's house on Saturday for our annual Spring Fling. If you are coming, we'll send you home with more free plants than you have room to plant. (Lesson: always have backup plants in case disaster strikes.) I can plant earlier than most folks here since I'm also in zone 7B like you, but I raise plenty of back-up plants to use as replacements in case my early plants die. Then, when my plants don't die and I don't use the replacement plants, they all go to Paula's where I beg everyone to please take home my orphan tomato babies. I only have one "rule" for the Spring Fling, which is that I am not bringing back home any of the tomato plants I raised, and everyone there kindly indulges me by adopting the extra plants so I don't have to drag them back home to southern OK and throw them on the compost pile. I hate to waste plants, although a composted plant never is actually wasted as it will return to the soil as compost. I like Robert's suggestion that you could direct-sow seed now with cherry tomatoes and still get plenty of fruit. You'd be amazed at how quickly direct-sown seed, when sown after soil and air temperatures have warmed up, will germinate and grow. I wouldn't do it this late in the season with anything other than varieties that produce bite-sized tomatoes, though, as the plants that make larger fruit shut down in the heat, and the heat is coming soon. Maybe. It is a weird year. I think May might stay cool, mild and wet but even so, the heat that shuts down the fertilization and fruit set of tomatoes usually arrives in June. Or, if you are in a hurry to have ripe tomatoes yesterday (like me), and you're not coming to the Spring Fling, you can buy transplants at any nursery or big box store garden center. There's an amazing selection of plants in all sizes with fruit in all shapes, sizes and colors. I hope you'll keep us posted on your continuing adventure into growing tomatoes and other things. Gardening is addictive and it is a wonderful, joyful addiction. Have a wonderful day today and don't hesitate to come back here with questions, comments, etc. We might not be able to solve all your plant problems, but we'll try, and we'll do our best to make you laugh and smile while doing it. Finally, I just want to add that you never, ever have to raise a tomato plant from seed if you don't have time or don't want to. My dad grew up on a farm in the 1920s and certainly knew how to raise plants from seed, but he worked and had a houseful of kids and never, ever raised his own tomato plants from seed ever. He had a magnificent garden anyway. He usually bought his tomato plants at a little Greek grocery store run by a family that farmed on the banks of the Trinity River near Fort Worth. He grew great tomatoes. He gave away brown paper grocery bags full of them every Sunday after church. He did it all without ever raising a tomato plant from seed. So, if growing from seed fascinates you and you love it, then do it. It if doesn't fit into your schedule and lifestyle, skip it, and buy your tomato plants (or come to the Spring Fling every year and adopt the extra plants we all bring). I firmly believe that gardening should add more joy and fulfillment to our lives, although of course it does bring a share of stress and even causes distress at times. True confession time: when I worked full-time in a career I loved and had a small child, I didn't grow my own tomato plants. I didn't start growing tomato plants from seed until a few years after I gave up my career to become a full-time wife and mom, and apparently, also a full-time gardener. I really didn't start growing tons of tomato plants from seed until a couple of years before we moved here, but I really was raising them for my brother's garden (which he turned over to me for several years so I could do all the work) because my Fort Worth yard was too shady to grow more than a handful of veggies. As my garden here kept enlarging itself and getting bigger, I grew more and more from seed. Now, I find it hard to stop, which explains the huge number of tomato plants I have now---some of them in the ground growing and the rest of them in the greenhouse awaiting a permanent home. The world will not end if you decide not to raise your tomato plants from seed. Do what fits your life and makes sense for you in any given year, and no guilt or regrets are allowed! Dawn

I wouldn't fret too much about some yellow leaves here and there. Your toms look fine to me. My toms can sometimes look pretty shabby as the season progresses. That said, you want to avoid killing it with kindness. You might be getting some fried roots with a small black pot in direct sun. Water might not be penetrating the newspaper barrier on top of the soil. Tomatoes are resilient enough and do well enough if we just leverage their will to live. :) I grow toms year round in EarthBoxes using Dr Earth organic tom & veg fertilizer (5-7-4). One of the tenets of organic gardening is the use of water insoluble forms on nitrogen (Dr Earth fits the bill). Weekly/weakly fish emulsion and such is fine as well as a supplement, but not necessary. Organic EarthBox tomatoes: