We have done really well with our minis. Priced at $3. We will raise the price of our larger bouquets next year to $6 or have fewer flowers and still charge $5. We are finding that harlequin marigolds are real eye catchers and get people to stop. One lady literally stopped in her tracks this weekend. They are great colours for fall. They last over a week and have nice long stems - plus they don't smell strongly of marigold. The pic is of our pill bottle posies of the marigold. Easy sell. http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-1e-nu4uiLt4/TnAKryFmfLI/AAAAAAAAAUE/ZBqv8L95thE/s1600/pics%2B028.JPG Our asters are popular and we will do those again. Next year we will do more gomphrena and celosia. I will be starting a stand of armeria as well - we have a section of yard where a driveway used to be an instead of trying to amend the soil we will plant something that likes sandy soil. The joysticks version looks great. I've got verbascum started and pyrethrum (not nearly enough). I am finding that having what other people don't have is a very good tactic for selling and it is interesting for me!

Jay, I am married to a former Pennsylvanian and he still has relatives there who garden and every summer I envy their cool temperatures (you know, they think 85 degrees is hot) and their usually abundant rainfall. When we go there to visit in summertime, everything is so lush and lovely that it blows my mind, especially compared to how roasting hot and tired everything looks in this part of the country at the same time. On the other hand, Late Blight seems to be on a tear there the last few years, so their beaufiful crops can fail suddenly. Marcy, That's a great list from the Kerr Center. Thanks for linking it. Susan, I think each of us adds/drops varieties for many reasons. After growing tomatoes for 25 years on my own and for at least 15 years with my dad prior to that, I'm just through with the massive experimentation. The truth is that out of every 20 or 25 new (to me) varieties that I try, maybe one or two is worth putting into the permanent growing rotation. So, rather than constantly looking for something new, I'm trying to refine the grow list and weed out those that perform least well in a broad range of conditions. I've reached the conclusion that there really aren't many, or maybe not any, incredible undiscovered varieties out there that taste/perform significantly better than what I've already tried....so I've stopped looking. I had high hopes for the Brandymaster series, likely because it is so tempting to believe there could be anything that could match Brandywine's flavor. They've performed so poorly here that I doubt I'd see a better performance next year or the year after. While many of you may be seeing significantly hotter or drier weather this year than in your average year, for us here in southcentral OK, our rainfall has been exactly 'average' for the year to date and so have our temperatures. If anything we've had slightly lower temperatures, in general, in Love County than we usually have although higher than average heat indices. So, for me, this is a pretty typical year except the real heat arrived in mid-May instead of late June so we got hot earlier, but not necessarily hotter than average...just earlier than average. A tomato variety that didn't perform well in what was a fairly typical year here at our place this year likely wouldn't perform any differently next year. In Oklahoma we have a wide range of average annual rainfall....some folks may average 15" of rainfall per year in western OK while others in eastern OK may average 50-60" or more. Humidity varies widely as does soil type and pH. So, what grows well for someone in highly alkaline soil and water in western OK may not grow nearly as well for someone in eastern OK with entirely different weather and soil. I enjoy looking at everybody's lists and hearing how different tomatoes perform for different people but I know that works well in areas drastically different from mine may not work well here. Growing in containers is much more complicated. First of all, nothing that I grow performs as well in containers as in the ground. Heat and pests hit container-grown plants much harder every year than those in the ground. The grasshoppers have completely stripped my container tomatoes of every leaf and fruit, but have only done sporadic damage to in-ground plants. It is the same thing with spider mites....only the container plants have had issues with them this summer. For me, container-grown tomatoes are great from Jan. or Feb. through the end of June or early July. After that, I might as well yank out those plants and toss them on the compost pile because they're toast. Last year, the tomatoes in containers did somewhat better than they usually do....but we had much higher than average rainfall and much more rain/clouds/cool weather than we see in an average summer. I'm looking for plants that perform best in the worst of conditions, not the best ones, because more often than not, we get the worst conditions every July and August. In containers, I plant tomatoes that can tolerate the heat and the restriction of their root growth and still perform. That means I often grow tomatoes in containers that I don't consider 'good enough' to plant into the ground....stuff like Better Bush and Husky Red Cherry. I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm just at the point that I want what produces best for us here, and I don't want to keep looking for something 'better' because I don't think there is anything out there that's really that much better than our tried and true varieties that make our grow list most years. For a long time, I gardened for fun....trying any and every thing that interested me. We ate all we wanted fresh and gave tons away and didn't care if we put up much for the non-gardening season or not. In recent years, though, I've developed a deeper appreciation for the truly superior flavor of anything/everything that's grown locally and picked/prepared/preserved at its peak of perfection. Thus, I give away little and try to raise as much of our annual food supply as possible. In a good year I fill up three freezers, a root cellar and manage to can 2 or 3 or 4 hundred jars of 'stuff'. Since that is what is important to me now, I want plants that produce well, that provide tasty food we like and that are not prima donnas requiring a lot of pampering. Thus, I'm less inclined to experiment and more inclined to plant what produces really well with little fuss. In a lot of ways, the 'experimentation years' were a lot more fun, but the farm-garden-preserving years have been much more productive. Now my family is spoiled and I must produce as much home-grown food as possible because they don't like grocery store stuff as much as they used to. Even DS's firestation co-workers prefer fresh, home-grown and I'm going to try to plant a lot more for them next year so I can send them all the tomatoes, peppers and other yuummy things they're craving. There just isn't room, or enough improved soil, to experiment with varieties now as there used to be. I don't mind that, really, because as long as what I'm growing is producing well, I've gotten over thinking there are incredible varieties out there just waiting for me to find them. Megan, Black Plum grew very well for me for a long time and then for 2 or 3 years it didn't and I dropped it. It is odd how that happens....and I loved Coyote too. If my garden were twice as large as it is, I'd bring it back to the grow list. So many varieties, so little time (and improved soil). The tomatoes I grow from seed invariably outperform storebought ones and I don't know why, but I've seen it enough years to know it is true. Dawn

Thank you so much for replying Carolyn as I know you're so busy helping others in the GW forums. I think I have properly identified the disease. It started on one Yellow Pear: Its started from the top - droopy foliage, continual lack of energy even with or without water, and ultimately spreading one by one ( all being the Yellow Pears that were in a horizontal row, got the same symtoms ). I will note I used no foliar sprays, but I did try to "pinch" affected areas off ( and destroyed )to see if it would help, as well as water tests as well ( watering and minimal watering ). I ultimately pulled them all out of fear of them contaminating my other plants. I can say, it might have been "tight" in that area. But I don't think it was a circulation problem. The rest of my garden flourished for the rest of the summer, and it was just that area that seemed to be infected with something, unless I had saved bad seeds from last year. I was going to try and amend my soil in that area with fresh compost this fall, and see what happens next year. I was also going to try and grow the following varities in that area next season to see if they are more resistant to my problem or lack there of: Neves Red, Cherokee Purple, Big Rainbow, and Brandywine. Only doing one plant of each in my back row. I chose those as I have read in some threads they are more "hardy" for heirlooms. I hope you can respond back, so I know what to do for next year. I've traded for so many new varieties this late summer (for some reason the Jaune Flamme variety has a high trade value; its nothing special just a cool color and a great color! won't make the cut next year ..) and I don't want to lose them to a soil problem. Thanks in advance ~ Tom

I don't post here a lot, but I do on the Canadian forums. I lurk here :-) I don't grow a lot of tomato varieties but I do grow for quality. This year I have one plant, grown form a seed of the original Gordon Graham tomato. He has the world's record largest tomato according to the Guinness Book of World Records. Through good fortune and a friend, I was able to trade for just a few seeds from Gordon Graham's world record tomato. I got one to germinate, so I have one tomato plant that is a direct child of his original! I do grow other tomatoes but I'm really excited about this one! We had a very bad tomato year last year with lots of BER. This year I planted the tomatoes in my good lasagne "wine" garden, dug in lots of old manure, a little lime and one Tums tablet in each hole. The same friend who gave me the seeds above, told me that a Tums will help supply the calcium the tomatoes need to help prevent BER. So I'm trying it. It's easy and cheap, so I figured "Why not?" We'll see how it goes. Needless to say, I baby that plant! In addition to that one, I am also growing our own heritage Portugal beefheart tomatoes (see link to pic below), San Marzano, Manitoba, Ailsa Craig, and Rev Morrow long keeper. Here is a link that might be useful: