Dawn - You are amazing. I doubt if many of us are in your league.

I have not finished planting so I have no idea how many I will end up with but I can tell you what I had (hopefully I still have at least one of each).

Cluster Grande
Beefsteak 15
Opalka
Rutgers
Red Cherry
Homestead
Tip Top
Black Cherry
Sungold
Big Bite
Mortgage Lifter
Sprite
and a mixed package of all heirlooms that I have now lost but I think one of them was Cherokee Purple and another was Opalka. I can't remember what else, so I will just take my chances. Most of what I lost were from this group.

Mine have been moved so many times, label sticks knocked out, etc. that I am sure I will have a few surprises. As I am typing this, I do not remember making labels for Beefsteak, so either I didn't plant it or didn't mark it. That may be another surprise. You can see what a good record keeper I am.

I do genealogy and a name, age, or country out of place would drive me crazy, but I am not that strick with the garden. My husband likes for me to plant a lot of tomatoes but he would be just as happy if I limited it to only 3 or 4 types (he says). Fat chance!!

The garden is fun for me and I enjoy having dinner close by. My husband loves vegtables so he will eat them all. I think it is wonderful that you have yours down to a science and can provide a wealth of information to the rest of us, but I will probably not change my ways and keep better records.

Almost all of my Federal career I worked in government contracting. Some of the time I was an analyst or Systems Chief, but in the early days I was also a buyer. We had this sweet old man that worked for the hospital warehouse, but mostly what he did was drive to pick up emergency equipment or supplies. I was young, and he was old, and we all just loved to tease him. One day I had made an emergency medical buy and he was going to town to pick it up. He had forgotten something he needed with him and was a bit embarassed about it. Seizing the moment, I said, "Man, you're gonna have to get it together." He kind of walked away from me in his sparkling white pants and shirt, and stopped and looked back and said, "I got it together once, but I forgot where I put it."

I am from that school now. Even if I got my act together, I would forget where it was. Age sure creates personality changes.

I just finished up with classes and am only now getting to planting (I know, I know! Good thing we still have some cool weather!). Is it still fine to put in a few tomato plants? I was thinking of planting mostly heirlooms also; I especially like the taste of Brandywine. Does it do well here? (I grew it in the NW) For fresh eating and sauteing, what are your favorites? Any tips for planting this late?

:-) Ada

Ada, I think I remember that Dawn said that was one of her favorites, but she'll probably respond. I have yet to plant my tomatoes. I may not get much early harvest from them, but I believe I'll get some later on.

Welcome to the forums, BTW, if you're new here, or, welcome anyway!

Susan

Carol, Oh, please, I have seen your plants and I know how many you grow and I can assure you that you and I are in EXACTLY the same league.....I just have lots more space to plant! LOL And, we have more in common than you know....before I gave up my career to be a stay-at-home mom in 1992, I had worked for almost a decade at Fort Worth Division of General Dynamics where I was a Logistics Supply Representative in the F-16 Program. We used to deal with Contracts and government contracting officers a lot.

I hope the weather gives you a break so you can enjoy your garden more this spring!

Ada,

Because it is still quite cool, there is still time to plant tomatoes and expect fruit to set before the unbearable (for tomato pollen) heat kicks in sometime between mid-June and mid-July.

If you can find heirlooms, they're the best, and of all the heirlooms, Brandywine is undoubtedly the very best. However, in our high summer temperatures, Brandywine doesn't set very many fruit at all--I would consider 12 to 15 ripe fruit from one Brandywine to be an outrageously wonderful yield, and most years it is more like 6 or 9. In a year where it get really hot really early, you're lucky to get 3 to 6. Isn't that awful? But, it is what it is. Since it is looking like the cool weather might hang on a while, though, maybe the Brandywines will be incredibly productive this year.

Other heirlooms that produce well here (and which are often available in stores and nurseries in Oklahoma) include Black Krim, Cherokee Purple, Arkansas Traveler (technically not an heirloom although most people refer to it as such), Bradley Pink, Sioux, Super Sioux, Mortgage Lifter, Jublilee (aka Golden Jubilee), Caspian Pink, Marianna's Peace, Pruden's Purple and Porter (a very large cherry) or Porter Improved.

Some of the hybrids that do really well here include Celebrity, Better Boy, Jet Star, Jetsetter, Early Girl, Brandy Boy (if you can find it anywhere, it produces ten times as much as Brandywine and tastes almost as good), Sun Gold, Black Cherry, Sweet Million or Sweet 100, Husky Red or Husky Red Cherry, Grape, or Lemon Boy.

When planting this late, I'd buy the largest transplants i could find (at an affordable price) and plant them in well-prepared soil. Just keep 'em watered with the soil remaining moist but not soggy and feed once or twice a month with a good organic fertilizer like Liquid Seaweed or Liquid Fish or Tomato-Tone organic tomato fertilizer.

This is really a perfect week to plant because the cool nights really haven't stopped yet, it is cloudy and cool which will minimize transplant shock, and hotter weather is just over the horizon. Once they adjust to being transplanted, they will start a period of rapid growth that should include them shooting up at the rate of about an inch a day. I don't know how you grew them in the NW, but here, we don't prune off suckers and we don't pinch off early blossoms in general. Why? They need all the foliage they can get to protect the fruit from sunscald/instant death and they need every blossom possible to set fruit before the heat kicks in. Our summers are so hot that many tomatoes don't set fruit in the hottest part of the summer, but will set fruit in late summer to early fall when temps. cool down.

Susan, You've read my posts for so long that its like you can read my mind! LOL And, it's because you enjoyed your Husky Red Cherry so much last year that I ordered seed and grew Husky Red, Husky Red Cherry, Husky Gold and Husky Gold Cherry and Husky Pink this year. So far, they are all doing terrific. I have some in small containers, some in large ones and some in the ground!

Cool, cloudy, drizzling, and generally yucky here today. I swear it feels like late March or early April here today and I don't like it. I am ready for heat, sunshine, etc.

Dawn

Dawn

I can't resist asking why you plant 8 Cherokee Purple and only 4 Black Krim, I BK is your favorite of all. Did you say the Brandy Boy are similiar to Red Brandywine in flavor? I have my seedlings up fnally, If i remember correctly, they will produce heavy, even in the heat of the summer.

I have some seeds that I have started, they are the Wal Mart brand of Brandywine, and the description just says "pink tomatoes" Does anybody know if that would indicate the Suddaths strain?

Hi Sheri,

I wondered if anyone would ask if the number of plants of a given variety was a clue that a particular variety was liked more.....and the answer is yes, it does.

The only reason I have 8 CPs and only 4BKs is that I originally planted 4 BKs and lost them to the mid-April freeze when it went down to 29 degrees here and stayed there for several hours. So, I had to use my 4 back-up BKs to replace the dead ones. If the freeze had NOT killed my original 4 plants, I would have found a way to squeeze in the 4 back-ups, and then I would have had eight plants each of CP and BK.

I guess I'll make up for it with the fall tomatoes. I'll plant twice as many BKs as CPs for fall. : )

I don't know for sure if the Wal-Mart BWs are Sudduth's or not since I've never grown them, nor have I ever grown some from Wal-Mart side-by-side with a known Sudduth's to see if they resemble each other. Are your BW seeds from Wal-Mart RL or PL?

How are your tomatoes doing in general?

Dawn

Dawn - I am hoping that the answer to the Wal-Mart Brandywine questions is yes, but they weren't marked. I didn't have any Brandywine seeds in the first batch I did this year so I bought a Walmart pack. It says pink tomato and mine all came up potato leaf, so it looks promising.

In the later batch, I planted the seeds I got from Tomato Growers which are Sudduths, so maybe I will be able to compare if I don't loss them all.

I replaced some of my lost garden tomato plants today and the stems just looked like damping off. Of course, the plants were 8 or 9 inches tall when they went into the garden. They looked like they just wilted in place then fell down, but when I looked closly then had a brown stem right at ground level. One still had good roots and was trying to make new growth. I think they just died from lack of oxygen because the ground is still very wet. It is getting so late that I just hate not having them in the ground so I put in a few more and will give it a try.

Dawn,

I knew you planted more of your favorites varieties, from the things you have said about them. I think I have went back and read almost every post about tomatoes that you have posted since 2005.

I don't know if the Brandywine are PL or RL yet, they've only been up for a few days, they look the same as the Brandyboy and Super Beefsteak.

I only have about 20 plants in the ground so far, and they are finally starting to grow. I planted them in the middle of April. I don't think any of them are over a foot tall. I still don't have the mulch down and haven't given them a baking soda spray yet, so some of the leaves are turning yellow. I'll have more time starting this weekend, so I am going to get very busy, planting and mulching etc.

I think my beds are what you would consider double-dug, I will take pics and post them when they are complete, and everything starts coming up. I'm going to try doing some interplanting this time. How are your main crop plants coming along? How tall are they and any little tomatoes yet? Sheri

I planted 1 of each of these unless it shows another number to the right.

0377(grower said it is "Fletcher") - 3
Aunt Ginnys Purple
Aunt RubyÂs German Green
Arkansas Traveler
Better Boy - 3
Black Cherry
Black Krim - 2
Box Car Willie - 2
Brandy Boy - 3
Brandywine Cherry
Carbon
Celebrity - 2
Creole
Dr WycheÂs Yellow
Early Girl - 2
Empire - 3
Eva Purple Ball
Goliath hybrid - 3
Goliath OP
Mortgage Lifter
Mountain Fresh - 4
Mountain Pride
Paul Robeson
Purple Calabash
Red Brandywine
Red Defender - 3
Royal Hillbilly - 2
Sioux
Sun Gold - 3
Snow White
Super Sioux - 3
Sweet Million - 2
Sweetie
Yellow 1884 Pinkheart
Yellow Brandywine

60 plants, 35 varieties. I bought most, but did start about 10 varieties from seed. Next year I plan on starting everything from seed in January.

I still have about 40-50 plants left. Some are my back-ups, but that does include 9 each of Cherokee Purple and Brandywine that I just haven't had a chance to plant yet. Hopefully, I'll get them in this weekend. I've also got 3 each of Pink Girl, Brandy Boy & Pony Express - 1 Sprite, 1 Bradley Pink & 1 Opalka. I believe the rest are red hybrids -- mostly Better Boy, maybe 1 or 2 Celebrity & Early Girl.

The Mortgage Lifter and 1 Mountain Fresh look like they are probably not going to make it. Too much moisture followed by too much wind :(
None of the rest look particularly impressive, but they haven't been planted in the ground very long either.

I've tried to set my limit @ 100 in the ground when it's all said and done. I probably won't do a lot for the fall, I'm thinking more like 30. Those will come mostly from cuttings, but maybe a few from seed.

My corn is coming up. Potatoes, broccoli, onions, carrots, & beets look good. Planning on getting most everything else put in this weekend. Maybe just this once things can go the way I planned : )

Jill

Carol,

I'm glad you're growing both Sudduth's and the Wal-Mart type of Brandywine so you can answer Sheri's question (eventually) about whether they are one and the same. (Inquiring minds want to know!) Honestly, I'd be surprised if the Wal-Mart ones are Sudduth's, but then you never know. However, if they are the Burpee seeds from Wal-Mart, I bet they are just plain old Brandywine. (Not that there is anything wrong with that.)

With all the moisture you have had, it is simply amazing to me that your garden is still alive at all. I know that last year's extreme rain was so hard on our garden, and it was so depressing.

Sheri, I know everything here is "slow" this year so don't get discouraged. The weather has been especially brutal and these cool nights are slowing everything down tremendously. I am ready for some of that "typical" May weather with high temps in the mid-80s and low temps in the 60s. (It was 51 degrees here this morning in southern OK.) Our weather is about to (finally) heat up starting today, and I am excited about that.

I have been killing myself in the garden. All my tomato plants are planted, mulched, caged, staked and labeled. It too me a LOT of long days in the garden to get that done. If I don't get a handle on it from the very beginning, though, I never catch up. That is especially true of mulching/weeding. And, yes, sometimes weeds sprout in the mulch and I have to pull them. I have found, though, that I CAN stay on top of it and keep the weeds out IF I start early and keep it up. I didn't do a very good job of it last year, though, because of the constant rain.

My tomato plants are finally growing and looking great. The tallest ones in the ground are about 3 or 3.5 feet tall. The shortest ones are about a foot. Almost all of them have blooms and many have tomatoes, but all the baby tomatoes are still fairly small. They WILL grow quickly once the cold nights end. I think the first tomatoes harvested from the in-the-ground tomatoes will be Black Cherry. The Black Cherries have benefitted from their location at the highest elevation in my sloping garden so they suffered NO frost or freeze damage. They also sit just east of my garden's entry arbor (covered in honeysuckle) so they have had wind protection too.

The container-grown tomatoes are MUCH farther along. The smallest is about 18" (it is a dwarf) and the tallest about 4' tall. I've harvested a handful of cherry tomatoes from the Grape and Husky Red Cherry varieties in containers, and two Better Bush tomatoes about the size of the average Early Girl. (The early Better Bush tomatoes are not very big, but later ones get larger as the plants get larger.) The NEXT tomato to ripen on a Better Bush plant looks like it will be a full-sized BB, so it will be about 3" across and about 2" tall. That tomato should ripen next week and probably will be used for BLT sandwiches. Not only do the container tomatoes benefit from being carried inside the garage on the occasional cold night, but they also sit on that concrete patio slab by the barn/garage and soak up heat not only from it but also from the metal building walls. (As summer progresses I have to move them off that hot slab and into the grass so they don't overheat.)

Jill,

What a wonderful selection of tomatoes you have! I think you've done great to get that many tomatoes planted in spite of our crazy weather. As cold as it has been here in southern OK, I keep wondering how everything is growing further north where it is even cooler and rainier.

My corn and beans are going great and are growing faster than I expected considering the weather. My potatoes and onions are absolute monsters, thanks to the excessive coolness which they are loving.

I hope to finish getting my veggies in this weekend too, but things seldom go as planned. LOL Well, I won't plant black-eyed peas and sweet potatoes until I'm convinced it really is warm enough, but I'll pop them into the ground soon if the weather stays warm.

I need to finish the veggies so the flowers can have more attention than they've been getting lately.

SOON (some might say too soon), I'll start planning my fall tomato grow list and begin getting ready to sow seeds. Most of mine will probably be from cuttings too, and if the summer stays cool, I may prune back some tomato plants HARD in July and let them regrow for fall. I will start some more paste tomatoes from seed, and the long-keepers as well, but my fall list will have many of the same ones as the spring list.

Y'all, I want some good, warm, sunny, tomato-growing weather and I want it now!!!! Whine, whine, whine. (I won't be offended, though, if we have a cooler-than-usual June, July and August, but that doesn't happen very often.)

Dawn

Jill - Does you Sprite have different looking foliage. Mine is small, thin, and delicate looking like Opalka is when it is young. I am anxious to see if that is a worthwhile tomato. Mine was a free pack.

Dawn,

You certainly have an auspicious beginning for a grand tomato harvest this year! Let's hope the weather finally warms up and gives us some much needed sunshine.
Good luck.

I grow my tomatoes from seed. They are sturdier and healthier and I know what they've been fed and not fed.
I grow mostly Romas anymore. I used to experiment with all kinds of tomatoes. Some were for us and some to sell at the Farmer's Markets in this area. The unusual types did not sell well in this area, and to tell the truth, we prefer tomatoes that taste like tomatoes, too. Since I became disabled, I began to just grow what we need and what I can put by for the coming winter.

I usually grow BeefMaster, Super Sweet 100s, Juliet, Brandywine (red or pink), Red Delicious, Romas and/or San Marzano, if I can find the seed. This year I am growing one Aunt Ruby's Green German. They produce a lot so one is enough for eating fresh.

I grow a lot of Romas for fresh and canning. Ditto the big tomatoes except Brandywines which we only eat fresh or cook with fresh. Low Acid tomatoes should not be canned. The Juliets are sun-dried or oven-dried and stored for later use (if they don't get gobbled up like candy for snacking by my family). They really are a distinctively delicious addition to Italian dishes and great in salads. I like to make a strawberry vinaigrette to pour on Romaine lettuce and toss in the sun-dried-Juliets.

I have a good many extra tomato seedlings that I just potted up to keep in hold for awhile. As soon as the early summer Romas are almost finished, I can pop them in the ground between the old plants for my fall crop.

There are a good many "volunteers" coming up and I usually grow all those I have room for. I get some surprisingly great tomatoes from volunteers.

Do I hear thunder rumbling again?...good grief!

~ sweetannie4u

Sweetannie4u,

It is nice to be off to a good start in spite of the weather. Everyone always tells me that I grow so many I ought to sell them, but I'm not willing to spend that much time at the Farmer's Market selling when I could be home in the garden or kitchen. So, we eat and preserve all we can and give away the rest.

I grow mine from seed for the same reason. I don't want plants that have been treated with chemicals. If you're going to grow organic, why not start out organic to begin with? Even when I see a plant I like and didn't raise from seed, I seldom buy it because I don't know what chemicals have been used on it. Well, I don't insist upon organic seed, although I will buy organically-raised seed when I find it.

Last year I held over spring-raised plants and started putting them into the garden in June for fall tomatoes, but this year I am just going to start them from seed in late May.

Some years I have had as many as 350 to 400 tomato plants, but just don't want to maintain that many any more. Here in rural southern OK, there are a lot of families that average about 200 tomato plants in their spring plantings and they also eat/preserve all they can and give away the rest. So, by their standards, I am "slacking off" this year with only 160 plants. LOL A lot of them, though, don't do fall tomatoes, so I'll "catch up" with them in total plants by fall.

When we moved here, I was the only one in our part of the county who grew heirloom tomatoes. Now I have converted a lot of people to heirlooms, and always try to convert more. I love all the different flavors, textures and colors.

Our weather is rapidly improving here and the tomato plants are growing like weeds. Sadly, the weeds are also growing like weeds! I hope your weather is improving as well. I think we've all had enough of the cool nights.

Dawn

Susan,

Thanks for the welcome! I have been following the forum on and off for some months, but haven't had time to join in; I just finished up my first year of grad school, so now I can breath easy and have time for some other things in life! LOL!

Dawn,

Thanks for the recommendations. Normally, I start my own plants, but I haven't had time this year, what with starting grad school and moving into a new place that needed renovating, so no time to build a greenhouse (or even snag a corner of the basement!). I'll look forward to trying those varieties next year. As you predicted, the nurseries in my area with decent looking plants didn't have those varieties, so I purchased three plants that said they do especially well in hot, humid climates...we'll see!

Well, it looks like we're headed into sunny, warm days ahead after those nice cool planting days (you can see that I'm from a rainy climate to call the past week "nice"!). Off to the garden once more!

:-) Ada

I've normally grown my tomato plants from seed in the past, but this year I didn't know we were going to plant a vegetable garden until it was too late to plant seeds. I started some tomatillo seeds and some Sungold cherry tomatoes from seed, but darned it I didn't let the Sungold get too hot and burnt them up in the greenhouse. Oh well, I guess we'll have to settle for Sweet 100's this year.

The tomatoes I'm growing are:
Burpee Big Boy
Homestead 24
Super Sioux
Sweet 100
Brandywine
Cherokee Purple - my all time favorite tomato
Parks Whopper
Celebrity
Rutgers
Mortgage Lifter
California Gold
Better Bush
Amish Paste
Roma
and a couple varieties of tomatillos
I've got 36 plants, which I thought was a lot, but you girls have me beat hands down. You must really do a lot of canning! I mainly can salsa as DH and I are both salsa fiends. Plus my family and friends beg me for homemade salsa. I'm hoping to can some to give as Christmas gifts this year since I love to give "consumable" gifts instead of more and more clutter! :D
Dawna

Dawna - That is normally what I do also. As long as I have enough to "pig out" on all summer and enough salsa to last through the winter, I am happy. I just got carried away with planting seeds this year. I have never been unhappy about buying canned tomatoes for cooking, but the salsa is a different story. I don't have Dawn's energy level, and I could never take care of that many. I envy people who can do that tho.

As long as I have tomatoes to eat three times a day, I am happy. What more do you need?

And, honestly, once they are planted, caged, staked, labeled and mulched, (and they all are already), taking care of them is easy.

Sometimes I do get tired of picking them, though. LOL But I never get tired of eating them, or cooking with them, or sharing them with family, friends, neighbors, DH's co-workers, etc. I've even been known to give them away to strangers who are driving up the road and stop to admire the garden. And, a few of our close friends have "stop and pick 'em yourself if you need some" privileges.

In a good year when there are "too many tomatoes" I always swear to plant fewer "next year". But, then, I think about the bad years when the crop is not as heavy, and I don't cut back. And, I have tomato recipes for everything, including tomato pie.

I still believe it is almost impossible to have too many tomatoes. LOL But, then, I suspect y'all already know that about me.

Carol, Once it hits about the third week in June and the heat cranks up, I can hardly force myself out into the garden long enough to water and harvest. I make up for it, though, by spending excessive time outside in the spring and fall. I guess it all evens out.

Dawn

okiedawn, would love to see some pics of your tomatoes. :=)

River,

I would love to have photos to post. Maybe one of these days I will. Even though we have two digital cameras, DH and DS keep them full of fire and accident photos (and even VFD training photos) and they are really good about taking pictures but not about downloading them, etc., so the cameras are always full, if you can even "find" the cameras. (I might be able to manage it if I bought my own camera and kept it hidden from them.) Also, I never have enough time.....maintaining a large property and animals consumes my time. Even when I see something I want to photograph, I never have time to stop what I am doing and hunt for the camera and take a photo. I average about 10 hours a day outside, and still have to do all the cooking, cleaning, and laundry too.

Maybe while son's fiancee' is home from college this summer, she and I can find some time to shoot and post some photos.

Dawn

Carol,

Sorry I didn't get back to this sooner..but yes the foliage on my Sprite plant does look a little different. I got the same free pack of seeds you did. I'm looking forward to it though.

Right now mine is looking pretty sad -- my little ones decided to help me water the plants when they didn't need it and I don't know how long it was before I noticed them sitting in trays of water! Now several have yellow leaves, but I think they will pull through. They certainly don't look any worse than the ones that got drown in the garden from the rains.

We also have a new puppy who is fascinated with anything she sees me planting. She's the cutest little Australian Shepard and I'll admit I'm quite taken with her, but I just know she's going to unplant something. If that happens, I might not be as fond of her for a little bit.

Jill

Carol and Jill,

I am growing the Sprite too, but mine are still to small to tell any difference. I will let you know how they turn out. I go them as bonus seed from Tomato growers supply.

Sheri

lovetotweet (Ada),

You can still plant tomato seeds and expect mid-summer tomatoes. Plant them directly in your garden. I cut the bottom out of gallon-sized plastic pots (milk jugs work fine). Bury them in your garden in full sun. Plant two tomato seeds in each bottomless pot. Cover lightly with light soil. Water daily and keep moist. Seeds will sprout in about 7 days with the heat we are having right now.
Once seedlings have grown two sets of true leaves you can scissor-prune out the weaker of the two plants or separate them and set them out in your garden and you'll twice as many tomato plants.
I have grown tomatoes this way for many years. It was the way my Grannie grew her tomatoes since she didn't have a greenhouse. I am always amazed at how quickly these "in the ground grown tomatoes" catch up with the ones I have been growing and babying in pots in the greenhouse since February.
I always tell myself that "Next year I am just going to wait until May and grow them directly in the garden." I wish I would listen to me!

Try it!

~ sweetannie4u

I noticed when I listed my tomatoes that I didn't even mention Roma. Not my favorite tomato, but my husband always wants me to plant them for him. I put a couple in pots (not even a very big pot), and wouldn't you know, they are the first to have blooms. I have blooms on three plants, a Red Cherry and the Roma. If the hot weather keeps up maybe I will have some early tomatoes after all, even if they are the little ones. I am surprised that they are blooming already.

All of the five plants that I put in WOWs in the winter, when they were about 2 inches tall, have lived. After I removed the WOW we got those huge rains and I wasn't sure that any of them would make it, but they all have. One looks great, two look OK but are not very big, and two look like they have had a rough life. The problem is that I don't even know what I planted and some of the markers got buried by the heavy rains. One of those that looks "OK" is a potato leaf so that has to be a Brandywine. I think the other "OK" is a cherry. One of the wimpy ones is an Opalka, but they always look a little wimpy to me. The one that looks really good and I would say is very close to blooming, has no marker. I seem to remember planting a Rutger, so I am wondering if this is it. I have never grown Rutger before. I think I will put a few more plants in the ground tomorrow before the rain hits and I have lots of Rutger plants that I could put in.

Carol,

I bet they all will look great a month from now if the rains just stay away and they can grow for a while. My tomato plants looked so-so to me just 3 or 4 weeks ago. They all seemed stunted and so far behind (size-wise) compared to most other years. Once it warmed up, though, they all started growing like crazy and look wonderful now. The shorter ones haven't caught up with the taller, faster-growing ones yet, but they will shortly.

I always think Opalka looks wimpy and sad the whole summer. That's just how it is....but what great tasting tomatoes!

For what it is worth, I not only label my plants, but also draw a map and file it away in a notebook so I can refer back to it when the labels start disappearing. I also plant different fruit colors in different beds, so that helps me keep 'em straight too. AND, I try to plant some companion plants that have flowers of the same color as the fruit in that same bed, so if I have pink zinnias in a bed, I know the tomatoes are supposed to be the pink-fruited ones. If I have yellow and orange marigolds, it is the yellow and organge-fruited beds. This works pretty well, except for the black-fruited ones. In the black-fruited bed, this year I have black ornamental pepper plants and Bishop's Children dahlias (maroon foliage) but no actual black flowers. Some years, I just tie a little piece of curling ribbon to each cage, and the ribbon is the same color as the fruit from that tomato plant. (This keeps me from letting the green-when-ripe fruit go bad because I am waiting for it to "ripen" and change to another color. LOL)

I hope you got your plants in the ground. No rain here, but that's pretty normal for us. Our May rainfall is below average, but I won't whine about it, at least not yet.

Dawn

Dawn - It looks like they have moved the rain forecast to the weekend so I have a little more time to get things done. We have been busy getting our house ready to be painted. Amazing how many spider webs and dirt dobber nest we have. My husband has done most of the washing, but I was working on the front porch and the bee I washed down decided to crawl up my jean leg. Ouch. About a third has been painted and it is certainly looking better. It will never be a beauty, but is still home.

I am getting blooms on a lot of tomato plants now. I still don't have everything in my garden that I need to plant. It still has a lot of grass and weeds so I am not sure how much of it I will plant. Even if I don't get much out there, I have tomato, peppers, cucumbers, squash, eggplant, and a few yellow wax beans in containers. Lettuce too, of course, but that won't last long. I hope to put some green pole beans, okra, another squash, and a few more tomatoes and peppers in the garden also. I just haven't had a lot of time the last few weeks.

Carol,

Yea! Yea! Yea! Blossoms!! That's fantastic, 'cause blossoms equal fruit! Wonderful. (If flowers get me that excited, imagine how wound up I'll get when you say "I have tomatoes!") LOL

Oh, getting the house ready to paint is such a pain. Luckily, one doesn't have to do it very often. I know we have a lot of spider webs and dirt daubbers also, and who knows what else. I don't think we are going to paint until autumn though. Our house is a very pale blue (almost gray) with white trim and a white roof, and it is not a mansion either. (We're not fancy people.) It is a cute Victorian cottage though, and just the right size for us.

I don't have everything in the ground yet either, but I am getting close. I have okra and melons and winter squash and pumpkins in paper cups that are going into the ground, probably starting tomorrow. Today I am pulling weeds, deadheading flowers and mulching. I need to mow, but that will probably slide until tomorrow. I need to be up and out early in the morning tomorrow to work through my "to do" list.

Too much to do and too little time. School is out and graduation is tonight. Lots of parties, showers, new babies, weddings and birthdays this month and next. I hardly have time to catch my breath.

It is hot and exceptionally windy here today and I am coming inside frequently to drink something cool and to sit in the air conditioning for a few minutes. At least it isn't storming here and no more cold nights!

Dawn

Okay, my girls are out of school finally. I went to my last graduation for this year tonight. DH is off for the next 4 days. You know what I'm saying - there is going to be a whole lot of gardening going on at my place. I'm actually doing pretty well - I don't feel behind, but we're starting to need a little rain. Can you believe I said that. I've put out quite a bit of pre-sprouted things in the last week that I worry aren't going to make it and I'm having to try to water them every day to get them to take off. I still need to get pumpkins out and pole beans. I planted some bush beans, so if I don't get to the pole ones - oh well. Then there's sweet potatoes, I guess I better try to find some slips this weekend. Other than that I think I might be done. At least until I read something on here I hadn't thought of and have to make some more room - again. I love this forum, but it does feed my tendency to get carried away.

Jill

Jill,

School's out.....summer's begun! Have fun finishing up the planting!

And, yes, I actually can believe that you are needing rain because we are too. (Of course, we haven't had nearly as much rain as most of y'all, but that's typical for us.)

Remember last year and all the rain? I never thought it would stop. Surprisingly, when it stopped here, it really, really stopped and we had very little rain for the next six months. So, it is possible to go from "too much" to "too little" rain very quickly, but is always surprising when it happens.

Your comment "At least until I read something on here I hadn't thought of and have to make room - again. I love this forum, but it does feed my tendency to get carried away." just made me laugh because I understand completely. Do I need to feed your tendency to get carried away? Got any black-eyed peas growing??? Hmmm. It is not too late to plant them. Or, how about growing your own Indian Corn, pumkins, winter squash, broom corn, amaranth and gourds for autumn decorations? See, I can always think of ways to plant more and more and more. LOL

Dawn

Dawn,

Can I just add a couple of tablespoons of baking soda to my Garrett Juice, to help with the fungal issues? Also,I was wondering what you thought about maybe using the Garrett Jucie 1 time/weekly, and also using the seaweed juice once every week as well? Since I may have bad soil. I wonder if both these together with a sidedress of tomato tone will make up for my bad soil. I am going to take a soil sample to get it tested soon. Sheri

Sheri,

I think it'd be OK to add 1 tablespoon of baking soda to each gallon of diluted Garrett Juice, but I don't know that I'd add 2. Because apple cider vinegar is one of the Garrett Juice ingredients (and the vingar is a fungicide as well), you don't want to add too much baking soda and mess with the spray's pH. I think it would be fine to spray once a week with Garrett Juice and once a week with liquid seaweed since you have "bad soil". I know you're going to get your soil tested, and then you'll know what to do to make it better. (Compost, compost, compost and manure, manure, manure!)

Oh, and mulch, mulch, mulch! At the end of a growing season I am always astounded at how the mulch has broken down and decomposed and enriched the soil. I think that, if a person didn't want to till amendments into their soil directly, all they'd have to do is pile on all the mulch they can for 4 or 5 years and the soil would still be completely and totally enriched and changed. As the good stuff in the mulch breaks down, the earthworms and other critters gradually carry it down into the soil. I even scoop up decomposed mulch out of my pathways at the end of the growing season and heap it up on the beds.

Have fun in the garden this weekend, if your weather allows. Hot, dry, windy and no rain here....our May is very disappointing, rain-wise, so I feel like our county's La Nina pattern of "hotter and drier than usual" is already here. (I know lots of folks in northern OK get more rain in La Nina years, but we always get less. I guess we're too far south.)

And, sidedressing with Espoma Tomato Tone is ALWAYS a good thing because is has not only the N-P-K but all the micronutrients as well, and in the proper percentages! I bought several 5-lb. bags of Tomato-Tone this week AND a 25-lb. bag of Vegetable-Tone, so I'm all set for the summer. : )

Dawn

Dawn,

I am hoping with spraying both Garrett & Seaweed several days apart, I won't have near the pest problems(keeping my fingers crossed).

I just ordered 2 bags of Tomato Tone from Ebay tonight. I Will just have to sidedress with the plants already planted. I am too am planning on using cardboard and newspaper for mulch this summer, and I have a compost pile started from my old tomato plants, I will piling it up with everything I can get my hands on. I have a bunch of egg shells and coffe grounds I will be tilling in my other tomato garden this week. Talk to you later. Sheri

Sheri,

It is an unfortunate fact of life that you will always have pests (I already have tomato hornworms munching away) but hopefully the spraying will help keep the numbers at a low enough level that damage is minimal.

My biggest pest this year is grasshoppers. The guineas are controlling them outside the garden, but aren't as interested in the tiny ones in the veggie garden. Well, last night at about 6 p.m. the guineas came into the veggie garden and spent two hours roaming the aisles picking something off plants, so maybe that "something" was the little grasshoppers. I hope it was 'cause those hoppers are eating little holes in the foliage of everything.....hollyhocks, sunflowers, peppers, tomatoes, beans, etc. I did put out some Nolo Bait this week, but you get a gradual decrease in the hopper population with it--not an "instant kill".

I hope you get a lot done in the garden this weekend....I know you're ready to "get it done"!

Dawn

Dawn,

I haven't gotten anything done yet, we have been building fence, then DH wants to use his last day of vacation go do something. But Monday, will be a different story.

I just put my Nolo bait out last weekend. I did the whole can at once. I have a 2nd garden out in the country on a friends land. I was wondering how you apply your Nolo bait. Do you just try to put it out close to where your garden is, or do you try to put some out in the pasture as well? I just bought a small container, so I think I may have to get more. I didn't see very many grasshoppers around the garden area, but in the field, it was pretty loaded, and I didn't apply any Nolo out there.

I hope your guines don't let you down, your lucky you have them. We have a couple of ducks that I got for my daughter, but it is time for them to go, the dog is way to interested in them and I need start tilling that area up for the fall tomatoes. Sheri

Sheri,

Something tells me it is going to be a bad grasshopper year, at least for those of us in rural to semi-rural areas. Maybe it is because I started seeing full-sized grasshoppers back in January or February (way too early!).

I apply Nolo Bait by putting on a pair of latex medical-type gloves and scattering it by hand on the plants inside the veggie garden.

When I have to put it in the pasture, which I haven't had to do in several years, I mow the pasture first (not required, but I think it makes it easier for the hoppers to find the Nolo Bait) and then also scatter it by hand. I don't strive for perfectly even coverage in the pasture, because as mobile as grasshoppers are, I feel like they will find it.

I met some people west of Fort Worth once who lived in Parker County who told me they have so many hoppers in their pastures that they buy the Nolo Bait in 50-lb. bags (imagine the expense!) and I wonder how they spread it--surely not by hand?

If your pasture area is large, and you don't want to go to the expense of trying to cover all the pastures, just spread the Nolo in a band 10 to 20' all along your fence lines.

I always have tons more hoppers out in the fields, and the guineas take care of them. So far, the guineas have never let me down. One guinea can eat 2 lbs. of grasshoppers a day, so even a small flock of guineas can make quite a dent in the grasshopper population. My guineas eat all morning until they are either tired or full, then lay down in the shade of the big pecan tree in the front yard and "rest" until early evening. At about 5 p.m., they get their second wind and go through the whole yard and pasture area a second time, eating their "dinner".

In a really, really bad year, though, as the grasshoppers migrate from farm to farm and field to field, even the guineas can't really keep up. In years like that, I use a lot of jars of molasses water near my plantings (as traps) and I use a chemical bait called EcoBran in my pastures. I've linked the bait below. You know I don't like to use chemicals, but sometimes you have to, and EcoBran is designed to be less toxic to wild critters OTHER THAN hoppers. Nolo Bait is GREAT in general, but it works best on grasshoppers in the smallest instars (when the hoppers are roughly 1/4" to 1/2" or maybe 3/4" long). For the bigger hoppers that migrate in from elsewhere full-grown, some DO die from ingesting Nolo Bait either directly or by cannabilizing hoppers who died after eating Nolo. Others don't, though, hence the need for a chemical bait.

In our worst grasshopper year since we moved here, the hoppers were chewing on our fiberglass window screens, cotton throw rugs on the porch, lawn furniture cushions, tree bark.....etc. They even ate the peaches on the trees, leaving only the pits hanging there.

If we ever have that kind of year again (and this year might be it, you never know), I will spray my veggies with kaolin clay (sold as surround). It makes the garden and your plants look dusty and dirty, but it works.

On the linked page, the Ecobran link is at the bottom of the grasshoppper page.

I hate grasshoppers!

Dawn

Dawn,

Thanks for the link. Plantet natural is where I've been ordering from. I think you may be right about the grasshoppers, I am seeing alot more here at my house than I did last year.

Sweetannie4u,

Thanks for the suggestion! I already put in a few plants, which is all I have room for this year since I am gardening out of pots right now!! But, I will definitely keep it in mind for next year. :-)

Thanks again,
Ada

Sheri,

I love Planet Natural. : )

If you're seeing more and I'm seeing more, that's probably a bad sign!

The last time I was seeing this many hoppers, the farmers and ranchers went wild with chemical pesticides and sprayed like crazy, and we lost tons of birds, including all the bluebirds. I hope that doesn't happen again.

Dawn