Reed, I only grew Purple Calabash once or twice and it wasn't impressive in yield or flavor. However, I grew it in wet years with the kind of heavy rainfall that can water down flavor. I've grown a lot of the older WBF varieties but none of the new ones he has released after 2010. In the years I've been trying them, we have mostly had atrocious heat and drought so it likely hasn't been a fair trial. I'd like to try them again in a year with normal weather, if we ever have one of those years again. I have grown Michael Pollan every year since I first tried it. Like most WBF's varieties, it has a beautiful appearance. This variety produces well, but tends to be more prone to Early Blight than most others. Last year it continued setting new fruit into August, even after I gave up fighting the weather in July and stopped watering the garden. It is a pretty tough variety. The flavor is only average though. Red Boar has done pretty well, Large Barred Boar did really well one year but not in another year, and Freckled Child, which I got from forum member, Carsonsmimi, at one of the Spring Flings a couple of years ago did well in a very hot year even though it went into the ground here fairly late. In general, I feel like the Wild Boar Farms varieties are likely better suited to milder weather than our typical summer weather here, although Black and Brown Boar performed about as well as any other variety I grew last year. You could tell it was very heat/drought stressed though, because the tomatoes got smaller and smaller with each successive round of fruit set. If I was going to pull the zebras, I wouldn't replace them with a WBF variety. I'd plant Chocolate Stripes which would give you beautiful red and green striped fruit with superb flavor. I grew it in a molasses feed tub that holds 20-25 gallons of soil-less mix in about 2009 and it performed just as well in that container as it did in the ground. We got very heavy yields that year and the flavor was superb. luvabasil, Most of my containers are black molasses feed tubs so I am sure the soil gets hotter than I'd like, but there's no way I'm going to attempt to paint them. I have used the Fusion spray paint before to paint containers and the paint washes away over 2-4 years, so it ended up being a total waste of time. I use several different techniques to keep the pots as cool as reasonably possible. First, I often plant trailing companion plants that will cascade down over the side and then the plants can shade the black sides of the container from the sun. I most commonly use trailing nasturtiums for this, planting them as early as possible in spring (after frost danger is past, of course.) Any trailing plant would work. I often group smaller containers of herbs and flowers on the south and west sides of the molasses feed tubs so that those smaller containers of heat-tolerant herbs and flowers can take the brunt of the direct sunlight and shade the sides of the molasses feed tubs. I also try to position my containers so that they get shade either at mid-day or in late afternoon from either buildings or taller plants to their west or southwest. I get perfectly lovely tomato production from plants that receive sun only from sunrise to noon or in another location from about 10 a.m. in summer until about 4 p.m. Even for plants that are said to need "full sun", our intense heat and sunlight can be too much for them, particularly in years like 2003, 2005, 2006, 2008, 2011 and 2012, and they can be perfectly happy and produce well in a half-day of direct sun. Dawn

I didn't start out to grow so much, it just kind of happened. I was also a military wife and planted small gardens and flower beds in a lot of different climates as we moved from place to place. When we finally retired, I wanted a garden, but we lived in southern Oklahoma at the time and I had only red clay. Although I tried to improve it, I never got it the way I wanted it. When we moved to Grove, I cleared a corner of the back yard, which had once been a garden, but was then a lawn, and I planted a small garden. The soil was really good and it did well. The garden did so well, that I wanted it to be larger, then larger, then larger, until it now takes up the entire back yard. Some Springs we get a lot of rain, and in the beginning, I had such mud that I have had it pull my shoes off when I tried to walk in it. I sometimes had to rescue tomato plants that appeared to be swimming, by digging a trench to drain off the water. I live in a neighborhood with a lot of trees and many people burn their leaves. Some of them now know that they can just dump the leaves in my north yard. One guy has a huge lot and he just drives here on his lawn mower with his 4x4x4 grass catcher, and dumps them for me. He loves it because he doesn't have to burn them. I love it because he doesn't have to burn them. I not only hate the smoke, but they are great for my garden. I also buy mushroom compost by the pickup load, and I have chickens. Although I still get rain, I just don't have the mud problem that I once had. At first, I only grew what I thought we could eat fresh because that is what I had always done since I had small gardens and we moved so much. What I discovered was that there were so many great things to grow, that I wanted to grow them all. LOL I wanted the great taste of fresh produce, I wanted food that hadn't been sprayed with dangerous chemicals, and most of all I just wanted to learn how to grow as many things as I could. I think our economy stinks, and is going down hill each year, so I wanted to learn to be self-sufficient in the event I needed that skill. Although I plant mostly in the ground, I have 3 raised beds that I use for early crops. One now has asparagus so I can control the moisture level, and I normally plant salad crops in another so I'm not growing them in the Spring mud. This year the third bed is filled with the first onions I planted. I covered it with row cover as soon as I planted because we have a neighborhood cat that thinks any box is just for him. As far as costs go, I consider gardening a hobby, and a health benefit and a lot more exciting than a gym membership. As my gardening skills improved, my soil improved, and I practiced growing more things, I found myself with all of this food. I can't stand to see it wasted, so we freeze it, can it, and eat it. If I had more space, I would grow even more, because I like doing it. I could garden for less money than I spend, but I am no longer young and I have some health issues so I need to do things in the smartest way that I can. Like George, I buy Lee Valley tools. I have others as well, but it is the Lee Valley that I normally reach far. My daughter-in-law says that my shovel is so heavy, that you just hold it up and drop it instead of pushing it into the ground. LOL When I have big purchases to make, I just buy in quantity, but buy for several years. Once you have a hoop bender, then it is cheap to make all of the hoops that you need. One year, I bought 500 feet of row cover which I am still using. I can usually get several years use out of each piece. If it gets holes in it, it is still useful. It is good enough to use over the raised bed that the cat likes, or to lay over the tops of plants that are under a poly low tunnel if we get excessively cold weather, or even to wrap around the sides of a CRW tomato cage to keep sharp winds off small plants. One year I had pepper plants until after Thanksgiving by surrounding the bed with row cover and putting a piece of greenhouse plastic just over the top part of the plants. There was plenty of air flow, but it still provided protection from the harsh cold wind. I still have plenty of unused row cover to use for a few more years. Last year I bought greenhouse plastic that was 100 feet by 10 feet. It is perfect for use on low tunnels since conduit comes in ten foot lengths. With the conduit pushed into the ground, the ten foot poly works just great. I only needed about a third of that last year, and even that piece is still good enough to use again. I need to learn to grow more herbs. I am fine with basil, dill, cutting celery, parsley and things like that, but struggle with others. They may get too much moisture, but I'm working on building a new VERY raised bed to try again. If you saw the location of my garden, you would wonder how I can grow anything because I have trees and buildings all around. Oklahoma has such brutal summers that the shade seems to help, and the buildings seem to take winds mostly over my garden instead of whipping through at ground level, so I think that extends my Fall growing. Even in the same State, we have many different growing conditions and just like a flower that 'will bloom where it's planted', we have to take what we have available to us and make it work, and just 'bloom where we are planted'. Every year I learn more about my garden. Last year I lost a tree which made a difference, so I have to adjust for that. Everyone has waste, whether it is paper, cardboard, kitchen scraps, chicken pen cleanings, hay, etc. If you don't, your neighbors do. Just get creative and you can make your soil better for gardening. Spend money if you have it, and want to spend it on gardening, but even if you don't, you can still grow a few things and learn a lot....and most of all..have fun.

There is quite a climate variation in Texas. I used to live in Bryan TX (definately warmer than the panhandle). Also some of the olive varieties that have suceeded in Wimberly TX (near Austin) are not the Mission variety which are hardy to 8 deg F. Many growers in California grow crops which they sometimes have to cover up with blankets or protect with heaters. Also there was no Texas Oil Council until people decided to try planting olives in Texas and after it suceeeded they formed the organization. Parts of Texas are too cold while other parts are too warm to promote fruit growth. I'm going to use a radient barrier material to cover a tomato cage over my olives when there are frosts this winter since they are less cold hardy when just planted. As mentioned earlier they are the Mission variety which is hardy to zone 8. Temperatures have not dropped below zone 8 here (this is actually z 7A on maps) in ten years. If Al Gore is right it will work. If wrong, like you said I will have expensive kindling. Hopefully as they mature they will not require this. Giving it a try and if this 20 makes it I will plant another 40 next year. I called MS State Univ about what I was going to plant, and now they are going to do an olive trial next year. Does the olive sock made of a radiant barrier w R10 sound as good as any way to protect the trees?

I agree that the sudden temperature changes are just as important as the minimum winter temperature with many plants. It is hard for many plants to survive a sudden plunge in temps, and you know how often we have those blue northers blow in and drop the temps 30 degrees or more in no time at all. I have found that keeping the soil moist when a sudden cold spell hits will increase the odds of survival as dry roots freeze more quickly than well-hydrated ones. Mulching helps, but even it does not guarantee a plant will survive. I've lost pomegranates to harsh winter weather, too, and haven't replanted them either. I think that the fig's ability to resprout and produce the same year is one of the great things about figs, although you don't always get a great harvest in the year that it freezes back to the ground. The way our weather fluctuates wildly, I am happy to get any fruit at all in any given year....although this has been a great years here in southern Oklahoma for peaches, plums, apricots, pears and blackberries. A great year tends to be followed by a not-so-great year, so I am not expecting much next year.