"So lemme get this straight, sm...you're saying us Zone 5ers can effectively "create" a microclimate Zone 7 in our yards next to our dryer vents, and (provided we do as they do in Z7), we can 'extend' our growing season, and actually DO things like peppers?! This is a major breakthrough, wouldn't you say???" MM, I'm ROFLOL, but I'm not sure if you're just jacking with me or asking a serious question. But just in case I'll give you a serious answer. Anyone feeling the need to do laundry 24/7 can have free room and board at my house. Plenty to do. There's your serious answer. I'm not sure why you're focusing on Zone 7 because my peppers and tomatoes wouldn't be up if I'd sown them already. Maybe because of our longer growing season? I'm not saying you can easily and effectively create a microclimate on purpose, and I'm not saying you can extend your growing season with a dryer vent. I'm just recalling a very old post that talked about the dryer vent. Even if you can sprout something in a microclimate, if you can't also grow it there you may not have gained much. I've been thinking about starting a post on sowing in microclimates, as I have discovered two more this winter, in addition to my known one. It will be interesting, but not nearly as intruiging as peppers in Zone 4/5 with true leaves. Maybe I'll get around to it. Things I read here trigger thoughts that lead to other thoughts that lead to other thoughts. No way another person could keep up with my segues. But it has occurred to me that tomatoes originated in Mexico (or was it further south?) but now there are varieties that hail from Poland, Siberia, and who knows what other cold climates. Maybe grspirit has found the golden egg of peppers. Grspirit, I approach life with the attitude that you can't win if you don't enter. I attempt things out of curiosity which others would not because "they can't be done." If I'd been around in 1492, I probably would have signed up as Columbus' first mate, just for the experience. Your peppers with true leaves have certainly raised eybrows. Maybe they're worth extra effort. Personally, I have no desire to haul peppers in and out from now until the end of May, or longer. But if it makes you happy, I say go for it.

Matt, We definitely have full sun here, so our challenge is to keep the fruit shaded. I'll concede that folks like Diane and I likely have entirely different challenges than those faced by urban or suburban gardeners. My plants produce better if I can site them where they only get 6 to 8 hours of sunlight in July and August, but that's hard to do in a garden that mostly has full-sun exposure. Some folks here erect shade cloth (50%) over their tomato plants using PVC hoops to suspend the cloth above the plants. They feel like it helps prevent sunscald on developing fruit and keeps the plants producing better in the heat. I've experimenting with shading the plants a little, but not much. Summertime is just too busy if you have a large garden, fruit trees, berries, flowers, a yard to mow, etc. This year, if it is a typical, hot, dry summer, I may try to find the time to put up shadecloth and see if I think it makes a difference. No one here in Love County that I personally know does any pruning at all except to keep pathways clear or to removed diseased limbs. Most of those folks do garden on a large scale like I do, so the time needed to prune their approx. 200 plants would make doing so impossibly difficult. Boomer, I not only don't have time for pruning in the summer, but I rarely have time for anything else other than maintaining the garden and putting up the harvest. (I'm not complaining---I love doing it all.) A lot of y'all probably aren't blessed with gobs and gobs of sun like Diane and I are. Living in a rural area can be a mixed blessing. With wide-open spaces, you have lots of good air flow which can help minimize disease too, but the downside is that the high winds that accompany thunderstorms or strong squall lines can blow over plants--even if they are caged and well-staked. There are other ways to prevent foliar disease besides pruning too. Most years I don't have much trouble with it at all....last year was worse than most because it rained every day or every other day and we had Septoria Leaf Spot, which we seldom have trouble with. If you mulch every square inch of your garden soil to reduce soil splash (and I do), and if you water using soaker hoses, drip irrigation or some other method that keeps water off the foliage, that helps a lot. You also can spray preventatively with cholorathalonil...something I say I'll do every year, but then never do because it doesn't fit it with my organic philosophy. I'd say "but this year I really AM going to spray with Daconil" only y'all would laugh because I say that every year and don't do it. Proper plant spacing helps reduce disease but I don't tend to abide by spacing rules very well. Remember if you do engage in pruning and pinching blossoms that you should disinfect your pruners (and your fingers if you're pinching) each time you finish one plant, below you move to the next. Otherwise you could be inadvertently spreading disease from plant to plant without realizing it. Dawn

Ok, I'm in California (Long Beach) ... Zone 10. I'm brand new to all this gardening stuff. This year was my first year ever to grow anything and I'm making tons of mistakes (but learning). The entire idea of even growing a garden was sort of a joking challenge on behalf of my wife. I did not trim suckers off my tomato plants at all until I read a couple of articles and saw a you tube video ... and this guy said, "I want to grow tomatoes, not tomato plants." So I started trimming suckers off my tomato plants ... to the point I was afraid I would kill the plant. OMG!!!!! My plants went crazy ... they exploded on me with the tomatoes, they are shooting out all over the damned place. In the picture below, that plant right there (and that's just one) is only about 4 feet high, its growing into my jalapeno plants, into my artichokes ... my cage can't support it (I got it tied off about 4 ways to Sunday) ... you can see all the tomatoes on the plant and that's just on that side ... and ... I've probably gotten 20 tomatoes off that plant already. I totally underestimated everything about these tomato plants! But regardless, I am a convert now about trimming suckers off my plant, if it doesn't have hair and its not growing up ... it gets pruned off. BTW, I'm using Ferry Morris Beefmaster, Hybrid seeds (my wife picked up on sale at Rite-Aid) that I grew from seed in a dixie-cup starting back in February ... and I moved em into the ground towards the end of March and just started watering. I didn't even think the silly things would grow, it was just dirt I scraped the grass off of and broke up (I did stir in some potting soil left over ... a little more then half a bag). We're getting tomatoes the size of my fist (some larger, some smaller). We already have had BLT's several times, gave away tomatoes, had em on our burgers and salads, and made a pot of home-made spaghetti sauce that fed 6. I'm like totally blown away ... its like jack and the bean-stalk!

Removing Suckers, properly known as lateral branches, does work well in a greenhuse situation b'c of limited space. I have a commercial place near me where all tomatoes are grown in greenhouses hydroponically and they do the same. As for pruning plants outside that depends on whether someone is staking or trellising or growing them on hogwire, or in cages or just letting them sprawl. I grew mine by sprawling and some in cages and sometimes the same variety was grown both ways and never once did I take off lateral branches. The word sucker came about b'c ages ago some felt that leaving them on sucked energy from the plant. But that's not true at all, but the word sucker is still used. Lateral branches are very productive as to fruits, and takingoff those lateral branches just lessens the yield of plants. Carolyn