SW area has been good. But if we could just control the weather. I guess we had one very hot year but last year was fine. I think some of mine have just started sprouting. I have experimented with different types of Seed Starting soil mix and I found that the non-fertilized stuff causes the tomato plant to take much longer to get big. I am using the Miracle Grow seed starting soil this year and that will speed things up. Hopefully I can avoid sun burn as well via a mini-green house I made last year. I should post some pics on facebook. I am doing about 34 varieties this year but only about 30 will make it into my garden. Hopefully I can bring near 20 of them when the time comes. We definitly need to emphisize that folk who GROW tomatoes successfully should bring them for the tasting. This is key :-) We had many folks at our event that grew them but didn't bring any or didn't suppose that they should because they didn't see it as their event but just as something they were attending. It's one thing if you didn't succeed in growing them but we are a small time operation and need everyones participation. I am doing a bunch of green's this year. They will make things interesting. They include: Absynth (Trudi brought this 2 years ago) Green Doctor Frosted Grub's Mystry Green Green Giant, Morx Green F3 Cherokee Green Hopefully I will have some seed available for them all! Greg

Mea, MAGTAG stands for Mid-Atlantic Tomato Gardeners Appreciation Gathering. This will be the second annual one, held on Saturday, August 25 at Southwest Area Park in Baltimore Highlands, MD (same location as last year). The festival includes a tomato tasting contest (In 2006 there were 82 different varieties), beer, wine, and soft drinks, grilled food (there are 4 grills at the pavilion), and a BLT bar. Anyone can attend and either bring homegrown tomatoes or a tomato-related dish (tomatoes used in the food do not have to be homegrown). We had about 35 attendees for the first MAGTAG, from NY, NJ, VA, and WV, as well as MD.

Cecilia, Where is Chickenman when you need him. He would say, "Only I grow tomatoes that big! Ha ha ha! and I am not comming to your stinking MAGTAG!.... by the way where is my disguise and map of B-more?" Anyway, Gordon Graham holds the Guinness World Records title for the heaviest (Delicious variety) tomatoÂa 7-pound 12-ounce whopper grown back in 1986. Indeed if we do get a record setter it will be a sad day if we can't weigh the darn thing, but since I have never had a tomato that reaches 2 lbs (don't laugh) I would'nt guess were likely to see one of those. Greg

Tomato Folk, Thanks much to Cecilia for all her hard work and for bringing all her kin; I had no idea she was one of 7. Cecilia's had folks sign in and she said we had 42 people. That beat's last years count which was 36 people attending. It made it fun to have so many folks from so many places. (HI, NJ, PA, VA and MD). The number of tomato varieties was down to somewhere around 50 varieties which was partly because we started a week earlier while the tomatoes started a week later. NO ONE TALKED TO THE TOMATOES! They were all in the dressing room discussing this before the show. How rude they said ;-) Also we were missing Trudi who contributes so many and Dunkel (Doug) from WV, who was with us 2 years ago and grew about 60 plants of many different WV varieties but didn't like to eat them. (huh?) I counted the empty beer bottles from my homebrew that I was "recycling" last night and 29 were empty. That's impressive! I didn't know that folks would care much except for the novelty of the idea. As far as how the competition went, I was hoping to test the quality of the "Emily" tomato in this competition and as you can see from Cecilia's results "Emily" came in 4th place. Don't let this fool you because it was the highest ranking Large Pink beefsteak among the winners. Over the past 3 years we have always found that cherries have come in way ahead. This suprised some folks that are part of other gatherings. Perhaps it is a Maryland weather or soil issue? Perhaps, statistically 3 years is too small of a sample? Black Cherry and Sungold are always up top and other cherries are in the top ten that include Dr. Carolyn Pink and White Current. This puts "Emily" on top of a whole class of tomatoes that includes, red and pink, large hearts and beefsteaks. Of course this only one competition and I doubt that it will be repeated next year. If it does and this tomato continues to produce with the same size and vigor, I would say that this a variety worth keeping. I have been debating this question since it seems like "Just another" large pink beefsteak to add to so many others that are already so good. Hopefully it will stand the test of time. The parents of this variety are Prue and Marianna' Peace. These are good parents. On that note, one of the winners from last year that was also a cross from similar parents but the F3s segregated so much this year that it was not the same at all from last year. Too bad really but some of those lines still seem interesting and there's always next year :-) The "Penny" method of judging has one distinct weakness. That is that it favors early entries in popular locations. We could dampen these effects by having enterants interlace their entries with other competetors on other tables. I may add that there was general agreement from the regulars that his was the most fun we had at a MAGTAG event so far. It seems that many thing were in our favor this year. The weather was perfect. Hope to see you all next year. Greg