Jay, Interesting review. You grew lots of plants that I have never heard of but sound interesting. Some of your list is also on my 'always grow' list as well. It amazes me that your plants still look nice and are still producing when mine have been gone so long. Although all plants always seem to thrive on the many spring showers that we have, I think it adds to the blight issues on tomatoes. My plants don't last nearly as long as yours. This year, I didn't start watering my garden plants early enough and some suffered from neglect. Since I rarely water 'in ground' in a normal year, I just didn't realize how dry they were. By the time I started to water, they already had issues. I have read several years now about the commercial types of tomatoes and I think you sent me seeds for one, but I have not grown it yet. I am going to add either the Campbell or Heinz one next year. Are those plants small enough that you could crowd them a little? I had lovely tomatoes this year, but they all had a lot of juice and I need a good, heavy producer that is a little drier. One batch of salsa that I made this year was just too thin. I labeled it as such and plan to use it in cooking. I used a pint of it this week for some Spanish Rice and it was great, so it won't go to waste. Almost all of my tomato plants were pulled early, but a few survived because they were just in out of the way places. Of those, Sioux seems to be doing the best. It has received some water because I water the peppers that are close to it. I think it might be a good one to leave in the garden for a later crop in my climate. I may consider starting it a little later and putting it in where I take out spring crops. It seemed to tolerate the seriously hot and dry summer that we had this year. I will certainly have to plant Royal Hillbilly again because it produced the largest tomatoes I grew this season. I didn't take it out, but did cut it back drasticly. It is still alive but I don't know if it will produce again. Besides your tomato plants looking great in late August when mine are long gone, I did notice a couple of other things that were different. Did you plant more than one kind of cowhorn okra? I planted the cowhorn like the package I sent to you and mine is ten feet tall. It produces mostly on the top and I have to grab the plants and pull them down so I can cut it. Your cowhorn appeared to be short and bushy. In fact, I planted mine near a walkway thinking it would be easy to pick from there and instead I have to shove it away to make it down the path. The taste is great but my location choice was poor. I think I will work on the soil along the north fence line so I can plant this at the very north end next year. The other thing that I noticed is your Black Cherry tomatoes. Is that the size you always get? Did you use commercial seed or one from a friend? I have planted seeds from several commercial sources and my Black Cherries have larger fruit than yours. In your picture of the cherry tomatoes, your Sungold looked as large as the Black Cherry. In my garden, Sungold is a normal sized cherry tomato, but Black Cherry is a large cherry, with all of them being much larger than Sungold. Your three favorite cherries look like great choices to me since I love both Black Cherry and Sungold. We ate a lot of cherry tomatoes because I planted heavy thinking I would dry a few. I was not happy with the results, so we just ate a lot of them. LOL Your apple tree looks great. I don't have fruit trees, but my DIL picked her tree and brought me a huge box of Granny Smiths from it. It took me all week to get them processed but it is worth it. Be sure to make some 'Apple Pie Jam'. She said she only brought me a third of what her tree produced. I made jam, apple pie filling, apple butter, apple sauce, and canned plain apples for use in baking. I did the plain ones because I could get a ton of those into a jar and I was getting tired of processing apples. LOL I would think they would be perfect for a huge apple cobbler mid-winter. We are having nice weather and I haven't been able to take advantage of it. I went to the doctor last Tuesday with a request for meds and thought I had a sinus infection that was playing havoc with my ears. I started 3 kinds of meds that night and got worse each day. Yesterday I couldn't stand it any longer and went back for new meds. I knew I needed an antibiotic and kept trying to take that one but felt that it was probably the one making me sick. I seem to be tolerating this one OK, but I am trying to stay away from pollens until I am better. I enjoyed looking at your pictures and felt as if I had strolled through your garden. I will continue to pray for your step-Dad and assume his health will improve after his treatment. I think you are the type to take a lot of responsibility onto your shoulders, so be careful and don't try to run faster than you have strength. You need to stay strong and healthy.

Hi Jay!! Nice to have you "drop by." I am growing 4 NuMex types this year, Sandia, Barker, Cochiti, and the Lumbre I got from you. So far, the Lumbre is the earliest and most productive of the four. Can't wait to compare heat levels on them! I hear you on the personal issues/life getting in the way of our hobby. For the past 6 years, I have been wintersowing all my flowers and veggies (except peppers). This year, I didn't wintersow a single container! After two really disappointing tomato seasons in a row, I finally caved in and sowed them indoors this time. The plants are way ahead of last year. Most of the cherries already have tomatoes on them, as well as a couple of the larger beefsteak/paste types. Everything else, either got direct sown, or not sown at all. I did end up buying a couple of pumpkins, and melon plants at a local organic nursery, since I waited to late to grow from seed, but not growing near as many as I usually do. The plants at the community garden are doing better than the ones here at the house, partly due to a sprinkler hose here that needs repair. Almost impossible to get enough water on them by hand when it's in the 90's! I'll try to remember to bring the camera next time I'm over there, and post some updated photos. Bonnie

In mid-july, I looked at my row of AGGold - beautiful plants 4 foot high, I couldn't find a fruit. In late august, they started to show up, and now they're covered. I've concluded that to really appreciate the wonderful variety of flavor, tomatoes has to ripen within certain temperature parameters - below 95 day time and above 55 at night. Here, that means 3 weeks in July. So to do this, I have to have flowers on the plants when I set them out in June. Anyway... Thessaloniki came through once again with lots of perfectly shaped, tasty tomatoes. Cour de Boef - Some viral disease (I think) with scrawny plants, pulled the worst looking, the rest produced a good crop of decent tomatoes. This one, I may pop for new seed because thats 3 years in a row that they haven't looked good. The fruit looks suspiciously like German Red Strawberry. Vorlon - stabilized cross between Cherokee Purple and Prudens Purple - I grow this for the market, and this was my first to ripen. It's a beautiful fruit and has less distorted fruit than the other dark tomatoes I've tried. Great harvest. Pink Climber - spotted fungus leaf disease and never really took off. Off the Vine Brandywine. This is one tomato that I continue to grow because, if the weather is auspicious and the 'mater Gods are smiling, it is the best tomato I've ever tasted. But most years, including this one, it's just another tomato. Had to pull most the plants because of July leaf wilt crud. Rainy's Maltese - huge plants, good fruit, early producer, and I'll grow it again. Sun Gold - I was smart and only put in two plants, which are now monsters. Pick a lunch sack of tomatoes every day if I wanted to. Oh, and before I forget, there was some discussion here some time back on lack of Phosphorous being an issue with leaf turn, red veined leaves. So I filled a 3 gallon sprayer and filled it with high P soluble fertilizer (bloom booster) and gave everything a spray. It seemed* to work, the plants looked far better, the leaves straightened out. *note scientific lingo.

Hi Swappers! Sorry if I haven't responded, but I have been reading your comments, and keeping track of whose packages have arrived. If you haven't posted yet, you should be receiving and email from me. Just want to be sure the seeds get there safely. So glad that everyone seems pleased with their selections! I really enjoyed hosting the swap again, but have to admit it has been nice getting back to planting seeds, potting up sprouts, cleaning up the garden beds, etc. Too nice to be inside sorting seeds now : ) Hope to see everyone again next year!!! Your hostess, Bonnie P.S. Dirtdaddy, since the peppers have been isolated in the guest room, Melvin's been eating my thyme plant instead. There's more in the herb bed though, so I'm not too upset with him.