I had read online about using 5 gallon paint strainer bags over small plants. They're not very expensive in my area so I tried a few on small test clumps of various bush bean varieties, burying the rims in the dirt. They worked well...but this was a very dry year in our area. I question whether there would be more problems with mold and rot if the weather had been wetter. They look like they're still in good shape for re-use so I plan to find out. I didn't try them on pole beans. For those, I've been using wedding favor bags, which are also usually re-useable. It is very time consuming, though, if I want to get enough protected seeds just for myself, much less enough to share. A couple of my varieties (McCaslan 42 and Blue Lake S-7) usually produce 5 flowers on each raceme, so I could get more seeds for the bother than bagging 2 or 3 buds at a time on some other varieties. During very hot weather, the bagged blossoms tended to die.

I am not planting on the scale you are. Last year 1/2 acre and I guess be like 3/4 this year as broke more land to plant. I presume with all you planting that your seed is bulk. I buy from seed house. They do cut off some on larger amounts as I am market gardener. I grow my own plants as that is big savings. My main crop is tomatoes and then peppers and so on. The new land will go into melons mostly. I hand seed in beans, onion sets, corn, squash and peas and will melons. I did no thinning. I make a furrow for seed and put in fertilizer and drop the seed, and cover. I use an old push plow to make the seed rows and to cover. It has a small turning plow type blade on it. It is two wheels and as I said old bought back in the 30's. Bigger wheel in front and smaller behind and the blade between the wheels can be set higher or lower. I have a one wheel 3 HP cutilvator that I may replace it with if get it running. At this time I use a push plow. If I take longer with seeding I am not botherd with thinning. Today I am planting potatoes. I have no idea what those tubes are and have not used a jab seeder. I mark my rows and take the tiller in and make a furrow for the potatoes to go in. Book says fertilize will burn them so not get any on the seed potatoes. l0-l0-l0 will it said. I am debating this morning which way to do it. Last year side dressed but need it the the row now. I did the furrows last evening and I am couple weeks late plant due to wet weather. On the seed I put the irrigation ditch in and the the seed furrow on down side of it . I toss the dirt away from irrigation ditch for furrow and then come back and toss it in the furrow. This way my seeds are close to the irrigation. The potates I will go up one side and back the other and toss dirt over them from both sides to get enough. Then go back in and put in irrigation ditches. I have stakes up the potato rows so can ditch and till. I have learned to not cover the seeds too deep. I have hesitated to put on this answer as I doubt it would be a help. I do not have a push seeder. Here we irrigate to grow anything. I have valve and gated pipe and ditches in the garden to water. That pipe has saved a lot of work but I have about l2 # pressure. I sell here at the farmers' market. Just me to do it. I ditch and then set the plants on the down side of the ditches. I have been trying to come up with a faster way to get plants in. Or at least cut the planting time. I am sure faster ways to plant then I am doing. With what I have it is best I can do.

Helen, I'd just separate the seeds and keep them. The fact that they stuck together doesn't mean they aren't viable. I've planted a clump of tomato seeds before where 2 or 3 seeds were stuck together, and they all germinated and then I pricked them apart, using a toothpick to separate their roots while they were very small, and potted them up separately and they grew just fine. If you feel like your seeds might not be viable, you could try germinating 10 of them and then calculate your germination rate based on how many of those 10 germinate. Then, based on your germination rate, you could decide if you should save some more seed or if you are happy with the seed you already have. I have grown several of the tomato varieties from The Dwarf Project, including Rosella Purple, and none of them have produced well for me nor have they had flavor that impressed me. Keep in mind that we have had nothing but drought years since I started trying to grow these varieties so it might not be a fair trial, but that's the weather I have here and it isn't likely to change. Of the varieties I've grown from The Dwarf Project, Rosella Purple produced better than the others, but it didn't produce well enough in 2 or 3 consecutive years to make it worth growing again. I grew it both in large containers (molasses feed tubs, which are about the size of whiskey half-barrels) and in raised beds filled with well-amended loamy clay. Rosella Purple set fruit well in the heat in the ground, and didn't do much of anything in the container, but the flavor was only average at best. For someone looking for a purple tomato that sets very well in very high heat, I think Rosella Purple would fit the bill, but I am very picky about tomato flavor and it just doesn't taste as good as I'd hoped it would. I've grown Indigo Rose a couple of years and it is just your typical novelty tomato that you might grow as a conversation piece. The flavor is only so-so. I do like having one of them in a large pot by the driveway (beside the red barn so its' color really stands out) where everyone can see it and ask myewhat sort of freaky blue tomato I'm growing. Eating them though? Not enjoyable. They produce loads and loads of fruit, which is a plus, but having loads of bland fruit that is not especially tasty is just silly. What's the point in growing them then? I think I used up the last of my Indigo Rose seed this year and won't plant it again. With tomatoes, cooking them, particularly when combined with olive oil, is supposed to release some of the healthful compounds and make them more available to your body and more easily absorbed by your body, so I think that the blue tomatoes could be combined in anything you cook---like tomato sauce or salsa---but I haven't done it. I just feed the blue ones to my chickens. I have learned to be careful about blending too many differently colored tomatoes together in sauce or salsa because you can end up with some odd colors....kinda like mixing together too many paint colors and ending up with a muddy color. Jay, Ditto on the heat here. We have had highs of 107-110 as recently as this past weekend. Yesterday our forecast high was 95 but our weather ignored the forecast and hit 100 degrees anyway. Because the drought continues and the heat is just ridiculous, the plants are really suffering. One fall tomato plant just gave up and died, and it was in a container and I could move it into shade on the worst days, but I just think too many hot temperatures since it was planted in late June or early July weakened it and it couldn't take the heat any more. Another couple of the fall plants look pretty bad and I'm not expecting much from them. I still have several varieties of tomatoes from the spring planting that look reasonably good and have a chance of producing in the fall if I keep watering, but I'm kinda at the point where continuing to water probably isn't smart. I think the return, in terms of a harvest, wouldn't be enough to make it financially smart to keep pouring water onto the veggie garden. Momotaro is still producing in the front garden and it will get water because it is right beside the asparagus. Several SunGold plants likely will continue to get some water because they are growing near the fig tree in the back garden. All the others, except for the fall tomato plants in containers, likely are done. I'll keep watering those fall tomatoes, but with highs remaining around 100 degrees all week and no rain in the forecast, I don't know that they're even going to get a chance to set fruit before the first frost arrives. Our weather is cooler this week than it was last week, but only marginally so. Only three of the fall tomato plants have set fruit. From those three plants, I have harvested three ripe tomatoes and have another one at breaker stage. That's not much of a return so far given that I have had them in containers and have watered them regularly (at least every other day, and often every day) since I planted them the last week of June or the first week in July. Our high temperatures have consistently gone 5-7 degrees above the NWS point forecast for our exact location all summer long, and they've consistently been hotter than the highs at our county's mesonet station. It has driven me nuts. I kept thinking that all our thermometers surely were broken, but then bought two brand new thermometers (the old-fashioned mercury type) and put them right beside the digital thermometers (5' above ground in full shade) and they are recording the same temperatures. I guess the fact that a lot of the rain has kept missing us while hitting the area where our mesonet station is part of the reason we're going hotter than expected, and hotter than what is recorded at the mesonet station. If I had known we'd stay so insanely hot and dry in August, I likely wouldn't have bothered planting fall tomatoes. We had a great spring crop, harvesting from the last week of April through the beginning of August, though it mostly has been only SunGolds the last couple of weeks. I'm about done with the garden for this year. I can't control the weather, and the plants can't set fruit in this heat. Being able to water enough to keep the plants alive is one thing but if they aren't setting fruit, it seems like a (pun intended) fruitless endeavor. Dawn

Most of us have a watering can around the house. When I know that I'm going to process some seeds by fermentation tomorrow (or just soon), I make sure it is filled up and allowed to outgas the chlorine over night. The chlorine, even in small amounts kills a lot of the things in the fermentation jar that we would really like to keep around. Even though I feel the chlorine is gone, I still limit the water to a very small amount - usually only a single tablespoon full in a half-pint jar that is 1/3 full of juice and seeds. These jars are set out onto the screened in porch and are not covered with anything. I get the occasional critter (bug), but they probably only add to the gel-eating mixture. Seems like some folks here are making this a lot harder than it actually is. If you do the pre-fermentation scrub of the gel and seeds (WITHOUT ANY RINSE), then like has been stated, the process takes less time for a given temperature range. But here's the thing that most are not realizing. If you get the seeds out of the fermentation and are rinsing and find out that they should have gone a little bit longer, NO PROBLEM. Just put them into the strainer and add a tiny bit of Comet or other scrubbing cleanser with bleach and give them a little scrub. Then rinse and dry. If you normally do a bleach soak, do it before the last rinse and dry or, alternatively, you can consider the Comet with bleach as completing that step. If you bleach, do enough final rinsing that will eliminate the aroma of the bleach from the seeds. Relax. Do that germination test and let it tell you how well you're doing. Ted