Beautiful fruit, Xuan! Our tomatoes are still small and green!

Oh Xuan!! So wonderful I can almost taste them. We are just now starting our discussions on tomato seed exchanges for fall and winter on the Florida Forum. It is still too early to start seeds here, though some of us will try anyway. Your photos remind me how much these few hot months make me miss my tomatoes, dearly!! What kind are yours, do you know?

Cindee, welcome back!
I really don't know what kind my tomatoes are. We're "easy growers"... we don't care so much about names... LOL!

Xuan

Cindee,

The Yellow Pears you sent me are about to bear fruit. If the animals don't get them before we do, we will have a HUGE harvest with Sundrops. Thank you for the seeds. I planted 6 seeds from your batch and all the 6 are huge tomato bushes right now.

Do you still have the Hungarian Lugas F1 seeds I sent you? Workers removed the top from my mini green house when I was germinating them, and they dried out and died in a day in the California sun. I was in a murderous mode. I only have 3 more seeds left of that, and I will only start those when my green house is functional and I'll have the new tomato garden set up in front of my room on the balcony. Then I will ask Tünde to buy a new packet of Hungarian hybrid seeds for me and send me next year. But if it does not happen, I will not worry. I have bought like 10 packets of heirlooms and hybrids, mostly weirdo tomatoes, so I will have about 20 years worth of seedlings from just these packets even if I don't get anything from Hungary.

So I hope you still have my Lugas F1 seeds and you'll enjoy tomatoes from them in the fall. Take some pictures and send me taste report. :o) Nobody else is reporting anything on these seeds, whoever I sent them to. I know the seeds are good because they have germinated for me. They would have thrived if I didn't have workers "taking care" of them for me. I think I salvaged a few of the seedlings, but I just planted them in haste without marking them, so I have no idea which ones are which in the second bed right now. Organization and order are not my strongest suit lately. I will make some pics of your Yellow Pears when they ripen if I get them first before the animals.

Have fun out there and get well!

Oh Soultan, I am so happy the yellow pears are faring so well for you. Alas all the seeds you sent me did terrible in our drought and heavy heat last spring. I have to look and see if I have any seeds left to try this fall. The yellow pears are sweet-tart meaty little yellow bundles that are great in salads or just to pop in your mouth. please let me know how they do. They were very prolific for me and I plan to plant them again this fall. We are just now doing our seed trading for fall plantings here in Florida. I have some new seeds and some old favs I am going to try this year. I am chomping at the bit to get the seeds started!! It's still just way too hot.

Yellow Pear Tomatoes are beyond prolific! We originally planted one Yellow Pear Tomato plant on the south side of the garage... the soil there was anything but nice! It was mostly clay, very gravelly, and very hard to dig... it's since been amended, but at the time, I had doubts that anything could grow there and flourish! That was two years ago. The Yellow Pear not only grew to the size of a small tree, it produced thousands of little yellow pear shaped tomatoes! We ate so many, we got sick of them... we couldn't give away the amount that one plant produced! And now, volunteer yellow pear tomato plants come up in droves, reappearing faster than I can pull them all out! No more Yellow Pear Tomatoes for us, thank you very much! We've had our fill!

This year, I had very sporadic germination and growth of many seeds... I planted several flats of vegetable seeds, annual and perennial seeds... and the amount of actual plants that survived our goofy weather was very low. I'd have to go look at the tags from the flats, but I'm pretty sure the seeds from Soultan didn't do well... and I had no germination on seeds from other friends, too... all in all, it was a bad year for starting from seed for me.

I do have some left over seed, and I thought I'd give it a try again next spring... some seeds actually keep fairly well for me, even though the rates of germination drop a bit. I've had good luck in the past with two year old seed from many types of plants.

We bought a few tomato plants for the garden... a couple of early varieties and some heirloom types, maybe a slicer or two... and none of them have given any ripe tomatoes as of yet. This time last year, we were enjoying tomatoes already! I'd say that aside from green beans and pea pods, a bit of broccoli and a few other things, this has been a strange year for vegetables. It's been a great year for perennials, but annuals and veggies have not cooperated!

I have another yellow variety to try this fall. It's Dr. Carolyns (named after Carolyn on the Tomato forum here) It is crispy fat and yummy for a cherry. It's called either a White or Yellow. Either way I like the taste very much.

Here's a list of my hopefuls for fall
Yellow Pear
Dr. Carolyn
Black Cherry
Black Pear
Big Zac (seedling)
Sugary-cherry
Sweet Baby Girl-cherry
Husky Cherry Red
Red Robin (cherry)
Applause
Florida 91
Porter (Pink)
Sprite (grape)

I love tomatoes and always take on too many, but in our heat, very few survive so it is fun to try a bunch of different ones. Xuan, how are all yours doing? Are you geting to eat a lot of them now?

Here's Dr. Carolyn

Here is a link that might be useful: DrC

That looks very interesting, Cindee... thanks for posting that link! I'm going to have to scope that out when I get more time... maybe see about ordering some seeds for next year!

I ran out to take some pics of my tomatoes and peppers. They are not ripened yet, but here is a morning pic of your Yellow Pear tomatoes.

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Those will be yummy once they ripen! You always take such good pictures! Very nice!

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This was yummy. Sun Gold. The first one. A taste explosion.

Yesterday, I saw a HUGE green caterpillar eating the leaves off of one of our heirloom tomato plants! He was about 4 or 5 inches long, and about as big around as a fat cigar! Ew! I love butterflies, but I'm not too fond of the big naked vegetable plant eating green monsters!

Nice tomato, Soultan! A few more, and you could make a nice salad with a vinegar and oil dressing, loaded with fresh herbs, to go with! Yummy!

I need a lot more for salads. I'm afraid that for quite a while, these tomatoes will just be devoured shortly after picking as is. Today, I picked two others. I hope, tomorrow, I will have three, then four, then... Does it show that I have a mild OCD?

It seems like you wait forever for the first tomato to ripen... but soon after the first few, they should start to ripen all over the plant! Then maybe, you will have enough for a salad! After that, there will be a lot, and you'll have to begin looking for someone who wants the extras!

In some instances, mild OCD isn't a bad thing... it keeps you organized. I am so unorganized, and now that my memory is getting bad, it's even harder to keep things together!

My immediate neighbor says that she could not keep one single tomato plants of hers. So we ended up agreeing that when I finally set up my green house this month, I will start a few seeds for her too when I start a new batch for myself. I guess, she will always be ready to take some doggy bags of tomatoes. :o)

That's good! You have an outlet for the extras! We probably won't have too many extras this year... our tomato plants aren't as good as last year!

They were on my extras list already, but yesterday's conversation was kind of an invite for tango. I didn't promise them tomatoes themselves though. What if I devour all of it? But I will start a few seeds for them as well. No problem. I have hundreds of them anyway, and I just bought some new kinds. I hope I will not find newer ones offered around me, or I will end up having an extensive seed bank of weirdo tomatoes.

I checked out that link Cindee posted... talk about weird and wonderful tomato varieties! I'm definitely ordering seeds next spring! I've never even seen a white tomato!

The starter plants and seeds sold around this area are usually the early types, beefsteak types, cherry or grape types and a few oddball heirloom varieties. But nothing quite like tomatogrowers.com has available!

I bought my weirdo seeds locally. And I could buy more, but I exclude roma and simple round, red varieties. I can buy those in the store, so I play around with out of the ordinary. The only round red variety I grow is some Hungarian hybrids. I can look around when I check stores for amaryllis bulbs in october and send you weirdo seeds, if you want. They can be sqeezed in between weirdo amaryllis bulbs nicely.

I do enjoy trying different seeds in spring... I have to wait until then to plant anything that requires growing outdoors. Anything I plant now will not make it, because it won't get large enough by the time it begins to get cold. However, I could save seeds until spring... I do love getting seeds to try from my friends!

I hope next year is better for my vegetable garden... this season was a bust because of the weather. We did have some nice green beans, several kinds... and our tomatoes are just now beginning to ripen in quantities.

If you find anything weird or different, I'd be very happy to try them, thank you, Soultan!

Too bad that the Hungarian seeds did not do well for you. I am having success with the peppers, and I just planted the three remaining Lugas F1 tomato seeds I still had. I will keep two in my green house over winter, and I will grow one out on my open patio. I hope I will have a little success with them, and then I will ask for a new pack of Hungarian hybrid tomatoes for next season.

Without the greenhouse built yet, I'm dependent upon the weather... last year, I had really wonderful luck starting seeds... but this year, not so good.

I don't have a good place to start seeds indoors, or I would have done that.

It seems that it's just not a good year for our vegetable garden... besides the green beans, which always grow!

Hopefully, next spring will be a little warmer and sunnier, and I'm hoping to have the greenhouse in which to start seeds.