I think it would be best to plant by heights. It really looks funny when you have the tall ones in front and the short ones in back plus the fact that it makes the shorter ones difficult to see. You haven't seen them in bloom so you really can't be sure which ones might look better side by side anyway. Mixed colors look great together and later if you find there are color combos you don't like side by side you can just move something.

Hi Bradleyo and to everyone! I found this forum last year when I lived in Ohio. I haven't had much time to log on here until now. I read this and thought I should comment on my experience with digging up tropicals from my yard in the middle of winter. Last year exactly around this time I sold my home in Columbus, Ohio to move to Kansas City, Missouri. I had to be out by march. I was really concerned about my trachy and others I had outside, in the ground, with winter protection over them with c7 lights for warmth. I waited for a day above freezing to dig and transport them into my warmer garage to pot for the move. I couldn't imagine leaving my tropicals behind to hope the next owner would take care of them. I dug everything up palms, lemon tree, cactai I had collected from the rockies and southwest, and other plants. Everything did fine with the move. I fertilized them in March, set them out in their pots and they did great. I'm still renting while house hunting so everything is still in pots here but doing great under grow lights. I say take all the plants you really can, pot them and give them a little extra care.

you have to understand, tomato cages are not used where i live (croatia), you can't buy them, and making them would cost loads. and honestly, i don't see the point, except for tomatoes grown in containers (which is very very rare here). there are a myriad of simpler solutions, people here sometimes emulate the greenhouse system of tying, by putting in the ground two concrete poles on the opposite sides of the tomato row (we use them in vineyards to attach wire too) and string the wire between them at about 2 m high. then attach a single lead for each plant to that wire and the ground beside the plant. then as the tomato grows just wrap it around the lead, it ends up supporting itself no matter how big or heavy it gets. the thing is, i plant more of them so if a couple die, or get diseased i just don't care. also, i plant a lot of varieties and am not OCD about taking care of them. as i said, some just sprawl around, and i'm happy even if i pick a bit less fruit from them than if i was fussing over every detail and stressing out ( i have chillies for that lol ). i was just explaining this to my mother the other day, she was freaked out by some of the sprawling ones touching the ground : "oooomg why are they down there, you know they'll get diseased! and you didn't prune them, birds will fall from the sky when they fly over your tomatoes! no they won't, over the years i've realized tomatoes are much stronger than we give them credit for, leaving them the hell alone to do their thing is the best fertilizer in the world (as a member on another pepper forum said when i posted the above chilli pictures haha). to get back to tying them up, there is also this tunnel system used here occasionally, which may or may not have netting put over the top of that center line, again relatively simple and effective. about selling produce, i don't sell, would you believe? i cook a LOT of paste and sauces, and interestingly how ever much i make i always run out before the next season's harvest. relatives and friends have gotten used to the "tasty paste" and snag it all away haha. the thing is, here most people are still growing oxhearts (if they are growing anything at all, the "grow your own food" movement hasn't really caught on yet, especially among my generation - under 30), and simple red cherries were considered exotic not that long ago. so when i cook or give away a rainbow of colors from my 30ish varieties it makes quite a bang. about space, i have what would translate to 3.7 acres of land around my house, most of it just empty with some fruit trees and stuff. but planting all that in tomatoes would be insane of course, so i think of it as unlimited space but limited gardener time and energy :D anyhow, to sum this way longer than needed post up, i think one has to decide where their priorities are, and cross reference that with available nerve and happiness amounts. in the middle is what you do to your plants :)

Posted by fabaceae_native . . . If seed catalogs listed ripening times in GDD for different crops, it would make choosing varieties for many of areas of the country much easier. I'm with you on that, Fabaceae_Native! But, seed companies do list GDD on their farm seed. You can see many sweet corn varieties listed by North Carolina State U, have GDD information. Those numbers appear on the tag of every bag of seed, for all sorts of crops. The horticulturalist calls this "crop phenology" and it amounts to predicting growth stages like ripening based on warmth and time. Here is a crop scientist talking about the crop phenology of Arizona cantaloupes and "heat units" or GDD's. This is a Big Deal since there's $87 million in that AZ crop! Where I find most information about GDD's is in the north. Canada is fairly interested in maturing crops in farming regions with short growing seasons. That shouldn't come as any surprise. You can also find a fair amount of information from North Dakota State U and other northern land-grant universities. Here is some from Montana State U. Of course, you have to be interested in growing barley or chick peas to make much use of it. Posted by fabaceae_native . . . I live in a high-altitude semi-arid climate that can experience some significant summer heat, but also has cool nights. The result is that it takes most garden plants (and trees and shrubs) much longer to ripen fruit, and the days to maturity listings on seed packets are usually way off. You live in the Southwest by definition just as I live in the Northwest by definition. With less than 20" of precipitation (most falling as snow) and nearly every day of the growing season ending with less than 20% humidity, my area doesn't experience exactly what most folks think of as a "characteristic" Northwest climate. I spend a lot of time in the Rocky Mountain forum and the gardeners there tolerate the fact that I garden at only 2,000 feet elevation because the growing conditions are very similar. Anyway, Growing Degree Days have become a very, very common issue in farming commodity crops. You can even buy crop insurance pegged on your crop's requirement and how many GDD's the Weather Service count through your growing season. It is time for the seed companies to provide this information for all varieties including those grown by gardeners. Of course, we can lean on our hoes and squint knowingly at the horizon and take a guess based on vast experience. And, I'm pretty good at that after a lifetime in agriculture and scratching around in a home garden. But, ag is probably the most thoroughly researched scientific field and the corporate food industry tolerates little squinting at horizons. If they want to sell seed to us, it's time for the Burpee's, Park's, and Jungs' of the world to move on into the 21st century. Steve