And a Merry Christmas back to you, Ill-Man! Your harvest sounds splendid!! I can honestly say there isn't one single edible thing growing in my backyard right now. At least, nothing I know of...unless you happen to have a taste for squirrel fricassee!

Hope everyone had a wonderful day today with friends and family and delicious treats galore! Santa was berry, berry good to ME, that's for sure!

Happy Holidays to ALL!
Marcia

ye gods!
Attack of the giant killer tomatoes!!! :)

Seriously, that is one nice fruit you've got there, and a bountiful harvest otherwise, it sounds like.

Happy all of the above to all you good garden folks.

Cheers!

-Ian

What a beautiful tomato. It all sounds great.Healthy eating!
My best wishes to you all. Had a wonderful day here. Ryan,
my son in-law fried a Cajun turkey and my wife made pork roast and honey spiral ham. Best of all was my mother,our children
and grandchildren from breakfast to late in the evening. I
couldn't help it I still work on my new flower beds. I am so blessed.
Felix

Hey Ill,
Merry Christmas to you.
That's a beautiful Cherokee. Hope you ate it today! with the oysters and salad.
It is a wonderful time here in Florida in the vegetable garden.
After spending the most fantastic day with my family from babies, children, nieces, nephews, sisters and parents, I can truly say also that I am truly blessed.
I will go on tomorrow with renewed vigor.
Wishing you all a fruitful New Year!

Treefrog

beautiful tomato :-) .... I just bought tomato plants, am I too late?

Evelyn

Wow! Just gorgeous! My Early-Girls are green but not ripe quite yet.

I have to say that nothing compares to our wonderful Florida weather and being able to pick a sun-warmed orange off of your tree Christmas morning, tomatoes in the afternoon for dinner and beautiful flowers to enjoy from your patio.....while most of the US is buried in snow.

I feel so blessed to be living in Florida again after living in Seattle for several years -- alternating between rain, cold, snow, ice and wet and cold, snow, rain and ice - and no sunshine-- for months. It's seriously the most miserable weather-wise place I've ever lived. Every day I am grateful to be back in sunny Florida.

Wishing you all a blessed and productive 2008. May your gardens always bloom, your veggies always produce and may the Lubbers eat your neighbor's plants instead of yours!

evelyn,
what kind of tomato?

if we get through january w/o a frost (highly likely -- avg temps in our area begin to rise mid-jan) your tomato should bear fruit come early spring... you might keep it in a pot until the beginning of february, then do a 'delta-charlie post hole' method. for support -- i cannot praise the square-foot gardening approach of electrical conduit and strings... florida tomatoes get WAY TOO BIG for anything else.

ohgreat, what's a delta-charlie hole? and using electicity on tomatoes? *looks-thoroughly-confused-now*
I bought a 'yellow pear', 'husky cherry red' and a 'better bush'

Evelyn :-)

Michael,

nice looking mato. You were VERY smart to pick it when you did. Those are the most difficult to judge when it comes to deciding when to pick em off the plant. In my experience, one extra day is the difference between a nice tomato or a wet paper towel feeling tomato with it guts hanging out the bottom.

Glad the red sails lettuce made it for ya. Let one plant go to seeds and save em for the next planting. I usually just let em go to seed and drop where they want. They know when to germinate on their own.

Tony

It looks like a big Christmas ornament! Good job!

Ho Ho Ho,
Kate

we had the tomato tonight... FREAKIN' DELISH. i love tomatoes. this one had a nice balance, firm flesh, juicy but not drippy insides... and is probably the most beautiful tomato i've ever eaten. another dozen on the way.

evelyn... read the post i've linked to below. what you see isn't electrical conduit -- it's the top runs for chain-link fence. i inherited a bunch from the old owner of my house. i've run out of that stuff, and now use 1/2 or 3/4 inch electrical conduit. it's VERY CHEAP (a couple bucks per 10' length) and you can find all the fittings inexpensively. you can build a a simple u-shaped trellis (think a soccer goal) for under $20. and to install it, i just pushed it 3 or 4 feet into the ground. the whole thing took less than 5 minutes to install. then use twine (in FLA, i think synthetic twine is best -- i use mason's twine) to hang the tomatoes. you can see how i've done it in the pictures. it's very very easy, and it keeps the plants open and off the ground. you can see that those plants weight a LOT (20 pounds or more). but my trellises never fail.

oh, and i explain in the post my modified delta-charlie-inspired post-hole method. for the tomatoes this (cool) season, i filled the potholes (holes with pots?) with household compost for a couple of weeks in august, packed it down in september, topped it with a little finished compost, and planted my tomatoes in october. they are growing like nuts now, no fertilizer or nothing added. free tomatoes!

oh, oh -- i forgot in my list: prodigious numbers of seminole squash, and so many eggplants (little fingers from TGS -- this plant is almost a year old now, and the fruits haven't reverted to brown yet! it's SO BEAUTIFUL too!)

Here is a link that might be useful: growing tomatoes in FLA

Michael, beautiful mato...Solstice, you're a real tomato too! lol

I am harvesting yellow pears like crazy. I have another mess of seedling heriloom plants I need to get planted out this week so I will have some yummers this spring.

I have been wanting to try Purple Cherokee. I have been getting into the black, purple and yellows this year. If you have some extra seeds, M, I'll be glad to trade with what I have.

cindeea -- i'll collect some seeds & IF it turns out to be a productive variety for me, i'll send you some. i didn't really choose this variety -- my stoopid kat ate all my tomato seedlings (and vomited them EVERYWHERE on our beige linen sofa... sigh... it's very hard to love her). so, i had to buy these seedlings from my local sustainable grower... the first one was great, but, hey, i've never eaten a fresh tomato from the garden that wasn't delish. disease resistance & yield is everything!

thanks ill-mannered, all makes sense now. I will follow your instructions.

Evelyn :-)