Hi, Charm, Yes, I did do that before posting here... I couldn't find a whole lot of information other than this: Variegated forms of these species require more attention to the proper growing conditions to maintain proper variegation. Note that under poor culture, these types will lose their variegation or bloom with normal flowers instead of the unusual shapes. If these plants are returned to proper culture, they may, or may not revert to their earlier more desirable types. I guess I was looking for a more exact temperature range or lighting conditions... I'll keep looking online... thanks for your quick response. Barbara

Welcome to the PNW forum. I always appreciate the advice here because the climate is so important whatever we try to grow. We had a wonderful tomato crop this year although it was late. I planted an old variety, Saltspring Sunrise that was developed for our region plus a friend gave me a few starts that are also good in our cool summers. Actually, I ate my last home-grown tomato yesterday. Are your special beans and squash easy to grow?

Tip, I was posting in another forum. The person told me about their friend in Taiwan. After their monsoon where their planting beds were flooded for over a month, Their Sans picked right back up and continued growing. And they had many different varieties. So warmth is very important here. They use moisture retentive soils and have no problems. So heat is the key here. Norma, You stated you lost 250 San. 'Forscate' because some one left them unprotected one night and had to start over again. Most any other sans could have taken some abuse. I bought one Sansevieria Trifasciata Futura type on clearance in winter. It was next to an open tarp. It had been exposed to 28 degree F. weather. No harm. I felt sorry for it and thought it would rot after I took it home and warmed up. For only 50 cents. Stush PS my first day I started to feel better. I been suffering with flu and pneumonia.

Sundevil, if you are within 10 minutes of downtown Seattle, then you are either WELL within USDA z8b (and possibly technically 9), or you drive too fast!! (friendly laugh) As for the main point of this thread, the usual rule of thumb is to add FIFTY PERCENT to the DTM ratings, to compensate for our cool summers. Anything rated 90 days or more is a longshot although they can be done in normal years with a little TLC. 70-80 are usually decent ranges for sweet, full-flavored late tomatoes, although this year everybody I know says they're just not ripening. Matina and what I think is Gardner's Delight (accident with the labels) are doing OK for me and have been ripening tomatoes for about a month now. It will be nip and tuck for most others but I think they'll be OK. Clint Eastwood's Rowdy Red and Earl of Edgecomb should be ripening within a few weeks. Pineapple is probably a lost cause at this point. I'm not sure it even has a single significant fruit yet. It is a very delicious tomato, quite sweet and "fruity" (as are several of the "German Bicolor" types), my wife's favorite (she told me to grow nothing but that), and it makes beautiful slices and dices with its multicolored fruits (I got red, yellow, and quite a bit of green even dead-ripe) and I've gotten them other years, but it is always a risk with its long DTM. Oddly enough tho, "Ananas Noire", which I think is an accidental cross of Pineapple (ananas = pineapple) and one of the "black" tomatoes (noire = black), is doing just fine. Not ripe yet but big fruits and they seem like they should be able to ripen one way or another. When I first grew tomatoes here we had lots of them in December. Early and late blight hadn't hit that particular part of the Puget Sound yet, and killing frosts are often that late. Now with the blights, not to mention an increasingly destabilized climate, we need to get the tomatoes in earlier. My strategy is to grow lots of short-season and cherry tomatoes, and only a relative few of the big, long-season, late tomatoes. Cherry tomatoes aren't always early, but they are usually easy to ripen. I love "beefsteak" type tomatoes (for sandwiches...or sometimes just eating slices straight), but they are ALWAYS risky in our climate. Even when we have a decent summer, all we need is one big summer cloudburst, and a lot of the beefsteaks, which tend to have thin skin and tender flesh, swell up and turn watery, or worse, split There seem to be some exceptions, but in general, smaller tomatoes are safer from too much summer rain or for that matter not being able to ripen. Sunset Magazine recently suggested covering tomatoes with plastic sheets to keep the rain off them, to avoid blight. I haven't tried it yet but it's worth a shot. I will have to try it soon as the rain is already here, and the days are cool and autumnal. I will try to give it a go and report back the results. Personally, Steve Solomon's books and ideas are too colored with Marxism (for those who are not aware he is a Messiahnic Communist) to have any use for me. He would denounce most of you for your decadent bourgeois elitism for growing heirloom or open-pollinated tomatoes instead of more productive F1 hybrids to make for central committee's glorious 5-year productivity miracle, and that was a typical kind of value judgment that underlies a lot of his assumptions without being explicitly stated (I assume he didn't want to scare his publisher). Yes I am aware that he speaks of personal sovereignty today and yet he still has plugs for the wisdom of Karl Marx right on his personal sovereignty page.