I sent in the "Santorini of Greece" tomato to the swap. After flooding, extremely high humidity, heat, etc. last summer, the Santorini was one of a handful of plants (out of 40+ varieties) that never showed a hint of disease and when everything else stopped producing during the worst of the heat, it continued to pump out tons of fruit. It definitely was the workhorse in my garden and will certainly be considered for another spot in the garden this season. The fruit is ribbed, probably around 4-6 oz. and was meaty like a paste but much more flavorful than most paste tomatoes I've tasted.

Susan, Some drooping of tomatoes is normal in this excessive heat and the varieties that have the wilty gene will wilt even more than normal tomatoes which do not have the mutated gene or genes. When I see droopy tomatoes I check the soil by sticking my finger into it, and if the soil is dry, I water right then. With all plants, there is a certain wilt point that they reach where they've gone from being stressed to being practically dead, and if they are allowed to wilt beyond that point, they do not recover. When I talk about keeping tomato plants slightly dry to keep them producing better and to keep the fruits' flavor from being watered down, I always try to phrase it carefully so I make it clear I let them "almost wilt". I try to keep that "almost wilting" stage from going to the "wilting" stage since there's a wilt point of no return. I cannot really describe how you know when looking at a tomato plant that it is at that 'wilt point' of no return, but I know it when I see it. I hope your Rutgers is the determinate one and not the indeterminate one. Sometimes they're not labeled correctly and the labels can be confusing. In my garden, the indeterminate one, Rutgers Select (which is the original Rutgers introduced in the 1920s) gets 6-8' tall and Rutgers VFA which is the determinate (or semi-indeterminate) one gets about 5' tall. Both are heavy producers. Stacey, The Tumbling Toms are in 16" hanging baskets and their roots already completely fill the baskets. It kind of makes me wish I'd gone with 20 to 24" hanging baskets. Even with just the 16" basket, the plants are very heavy and it takes a strong support to hold them. I wasn't sure if I would have anything strong enough to support a larger basket. They are great producers and early producers. Today I harvested 3 or 4 dozen Tumbling Tom yellow fruit and about 8 Tumbling Tom Red. I did notice when raising them from seed that the yellow ones were much more vigorous growers, even as seedlings, than the red ones, and that has remained true in terms of productivity. I don't know if the reds will catch up with the yellows or if the yellows are just genetically stronger. Dawn

Oh, this is such an old thread... but at least I won't be the only one still posting in it! I was gifted a Sungold and a Brandywine (no idea which version) from a friend years ago, stuck them in a patch I dug out of the front yard... and they were amazing! I haven't been able to bear to eat grocery-store tomatoes since. But the intervening years have been focused on other things; my one attempt at gardening 3 years ago was a failure when I didn't find time to water (or weed) anything for three weeks at the end of June. Anyway, this year I finally have the right mix of time and space so I spent the winter reading up and dreaming, and... well, let's just say my family and local food shelf will have lots of tomatoes in August... Most seeds from SandHill, but the Sungold Select II and Green Zebra from Bakers Creek, and a handful are from cherrygal.com Cherry Types Blondkopfchen Sungold Select II (soooo excited to have snagged these!) Black Cherry Green Doctors Snow White Cherry (gift from SandHill) Hawaiian Mexican Cocktail "Regular" (I can never keep the beefsteak/medium/etc apart in my head) Brandywine, Sudduths Gogosha Green Zebra Black Krim Black Sea Man Rosabec Purple Calabash (gift from SandHill) Lucky Cross Potato Leaf "Other" Riesentraube (we'll see what tomato wine tastes like...) Yellow Pygmy Costulato Genovese When I got the two extra varieties from SandHill, I couldn't decide whether to jump up and down for joy (yay, two more flavors to try!) or despair - I spent weeks choosing my list, how could I fit 2 more?? But I decided joy was the right reaction. :) I'm sure it'll be more than a jungle in the yard this summer, but it'll be an edible jungle... and I have never been so grateful for the half-acre lot we have as this year. :) Good thing my husband is here to talk me out of cutting down our trees so I can have even more sunlight... Unfortunately, the cutworms have already been busy - but fortunately, although I only planned to grow 2 plants of each variety, I actually PLANTED 7-10 seeds... and almost all of them came up...and then I couldn't bear to cull since they all looked so healthy... so I ended up with lots of seedlings to give away. :) And to replace cutworm-killed plants. And then to give away some more! And still have replacements on hand in case my popsicle sticks don't do the trick with the cutworms... I'm just lucky Minnesota had an incredibly early and mild spring, my seedlings have been outside since the first week of March (with short breaks inside overnight until April) - there was no way I had enough grow-lights or space in the basement for them all! The seeds that I saved from those unknown Brandywines years ago still germinated three years later, so I'm really hoping to increase my seed from every one of these varieties this summer. Just need to cross my fingers and toes that I can get at least one tomato of each variety to survive and ripen enough to collect their seeds! Watching the cutworm decimation last week made me doubt I'll have luck that good, but hope springs eternal...

"Elfin sounds interesting. Would this be a candidate for a 3 gallon pot?" Probably, although I have yet to try that. Because Elfin is determinate, it wouldn't waste energy (and nutrients) in endless foliage. The leaves are actually somewhat open, compared to most tomatoes I've grown... it seems to use the large clusters of green fruit as leaves? A good tomato for pot culture would be a currant tomato... the pot limits its otherwise rampant growth. Most of the currant tomatoes I tried had issues; the red ones cracked, the yellow ones dropped excessively when ripe. A yellow variety from Sample Seeds (Solanum spontaneum) does neither. Tiny 1/3-1/2" yellow fruit in numerous trusses of 10 or so. Seeds so tiny you won't know they are there. The ripe tomatoes keep for a very long time (at least several weeks) if picked with the stem attached; some will even dry. Not too sweet eaten out of hand, but pleasant, and good in salads. You'll get plenty out of one pot. Be warned, though - DON'T try growing that currant tomato in the ground, unless you want a 6-8' heavily branched monster, with literally thousands of tomatoes!!! I gave a friend one plant, which she planted next to her fence... it grew to be 3' wide, and climbed up & over the 6' fence into the neighbor's yard. She eventually got tired of picking them all.