Mercury was introduced in 1971 by one of the companies that merged into Seminis. Very similar to Cal Wonder, but never captured the market share. I can only find it at Livingston Seed. Like California Wonder it was developed for the green bell market. Where holding the green color is a marketing advantage. Some of the newer introductions designed for the ripe bell market ripen much faster. Most will be hybrids however and take about 20 extra days to ripen.

I have 3 purple tomatillo plants growing and they don't look like this one and their blossoms are yellow not white. Plus the seeds for tomatillos are small and I would have immediately recognized it as a non pepper(even though I am a gardening newbie, I know at least this much). I started and transplanted all my peppers first, so this plant would have to have larger seeds, similar to a pepper in size.

I know nothing about the Paragon from Tomatofest so cannot comment on it. I have grown almost every Livingston variety offered by Victory Seeds and I know/trust their seeds for that reason. The Paragon I grew from Victory Seeds was true to type and the fruit I got matched Livingston's description and Victory's description. I've never grown DeWeese Streaked. Want to know why? It is a late season variety, and it can be very hard to get late-season types to set fruit early enough in our climate. If they don't set fruit in May/the first half of June, high temps and high humidity tend to shut down pollination/fertilization and then they won't set many, if any, fruits until fall. Then, since they take a long time to mature, you're racing the cold weather to get any ripe ones at all. I tend to avoid late-season varieties for that reason, unless I can plant them in Feb. in a pot and drag them into the garage at night. Using that technique, they'll usually set fruit for me in late April or early May and then I can be harvesting it by July. Otherwise, it isn't worth babying a plant through all that heat only to get a handful of fruit in the fall. I'd rather have tomatoes for months. I work hard to improve my in-ground soil and I spend a lot of money carefully blending a soil-less mix for my containers, so I don't want to waste "good soil" on a plant that is not highly productive. I can tell by the first week in June if a tomato plant is going to be productive for me, or not, by how many flowers/fruit it has set by then. In my area, the temps usually hit the point of no return during the third week in June, so if fruits aren't on the tomato plants (not talking bite-sized ones here, they're different) by that point, then that plant is not going to have a good year and is a waste of space. I also am not a really huge fan of the very large bicolors, having found them to be quite erratic in performance. Some years they taste great, other years they don't. Some years they are beautiful, other years they have a lot of cracking and aren't so great. If it rains a lot, especially after they're breaking color, their texture can get mushy or mealy and the excess moisture waters down the flavor. I've had better results from red/green bicolors than from yellow/orange/red ones. I don't know why but for whatever reason they seem better adapted to our climate. To be honest, even the bicolored cherry types I've grown weren;t good enough to earn a return engagement. It isn't that there was something wrong with them, but rather than there just wasn't anything that special. This year some of the Brad Gates' varieties I'm trying are bicolors and they may be late-season ones, but I've toyed with trying them for years and finally decided to just do it. However, they're "experiments" that I'm added in addition to all my regular tomatoes, which means I added more containers in order to have them and not that they are taking the place of one of our "usual" productive varieties. That makes them expendable if they aren't doing well. I have a certain number of tomatoes I expect to get for fresh eating, canning, salsa, pasta sauce, dehydrating, etc. so I am pretty ruthless about not growing types that won't/don't deliver. For me, late season types tend to not deliver. Your results might vary, and you certainly should try whatever pleases you, but remember that there is virtually nothing we can do here to offset the effect that high heat/high humidity have on tomato production and choose your varieties with that in mind. What is it about DeWeese Streaked that appeals to you? Dawn

Hi Rdunn, You should still be able to get decent germination since you have kept them in a good spot. When you saved the seeds though, was you pepper completely ripe red? If you saved seeds from a green pepper, that will affect the germination greatly and you may not see much germination. Remy