my seed list was last updated 12/7/14. some seeds have been traded/used since then. but I have not found the magic link to update my list. can email current list to anyone interested.

Hi Bob, I'll preface my comments by stating we were in drought throughout the spring and summer with very little rainfall at all until June, and even then, there was far too little. So, while our growing conditions here in Oklahoma are always pretty harsh, this year was worse than usual because it was backwards. Instead of having good spring rainfall to get the garden off to an early start and then the usual summer drought, we had drought from Jan-Sept (and the drought still is going strong), and began June with only about 6" of rainfall recorded for the entire year at that point. We got a lot of rain and humidity in June and July, though not nearly enough rain to end the drought. With the weather being so bizarrely dry during our normal wet season, some tomato plants weren't very happy. TexWine (and Dixiewine, and it was my first year with both) germinated a little slowly and grew, as seedlings, very slowly. Because of that, I kept the seedlings in their starter containers longer than all the other varieties I grew, and didn't put them into the ground until late April. Most of the other varieties went into the ground between late March and mid-April. Even then, the Dixiewine and Texwine plants were ridiculously small and were so far behind my other plants that I feared transplanting them into the garden was going to be a waste of time and space. How did it work out? Texwine set fruit earlier than Dixiewine, and set a lot more of it. The first few were quite large, and the later ones got progressively smaller as summer went on, which is typical in our hot growing conditions. Because we had several good days with decent rainfall and cooler than normal temperatures in both June and July, Texwine (and Dixiewine) continued setting fruit well into July. The Texwine fruit had very good flavor. So did Dixiewine, which may have hurt its own cause by setting tons and tons of fruit all at once. Because it had set so very many fruit during a period of severe to extreme drought, the fruit stayed much smaller than I expected. TexWine had significantly fewer fruit but they enlarged to the expected size. Even though Texwine produced less fruit per plant than Dixiewine, it still produced a lot of fruit. I hate to even attempt to form an opinion on varieties that are new to me on the basis of one very odd growing season with weather that is almost totally opposite from what we usually get, but I was pleased enough with how they both performed that I'll plant them again next year. Drought conditions worsened again in August in conjunction with very hot weather at our house, and both plants died back to the ground. I didn't irrigate as much as I usually do in August and probably could have kept them alive if only I'd watered them. A little rain (though not nearly enough) began falling again in September, and both plants have resprouted from the ground but the chances that they'll flower and produce a ripe tomato before the first freeze here (around mid-November) falls somewhere between slim and none. I do think it says something about their resilience that they did regrow from the roots once some rain finally fell. Are you wondering if the flavor is a good as Brandywine? I'd say that, as grown here in the conditions we had, it isn't quite as good, but it is very, very good. Finally, to give you the proper context, I planted two Brandywine Sudduth plants in the ground around the end of March. Normally, I am lucky 4 years out of 5 to get 6 fruit off a Brandywine plant. We just get too hot too early for it most years and the heat and humidity shut down pollination before many fruit can set. In this most bizarre year of years, both my Brandywine Sudduth plants produced dozens and dozens of fruit per plant, with the first ones ripening very early (either very late May or earliest June). They also continued setting fruit as late as mid-July, though production slowed down a lot by early July. This was our best Brandywine year since 2004 (a very wet and humid year that the Brandywine plants loved, likely because the weather also was cooler than usual). I wish I'd had the Texwine and Dixiewine plants at the same size as the Brandywine Sudduth plants and could have put them all in the ground, side by side, at the same time, because that would have been a more fair comparison. My expectations (prior to sowing seed) were that Texwine and Dixiewine likely would outproduce Brandywine (in my garden everything outproduces Brandywine most years) and, instead, the total opposite happened. I don't know if their slow growth as seedlings will be repeated in 2015. I'm hoping it was just a fluke. I grow hundreds of tomato plants from seed every year, and there's not many varieties that ever have been as slow to grow in the seedling stage as Dixiewine and Texwine so I am hoping that this year's extremely slow growth was an anomaly. We had an incredible tomato year here despite terrible drought conditions, and a huge onslaught of grasshoppers, so I cannot complain. Mostly, this was due to the miracle of irrigation. Local gardeners here in our area tended to have either a very bad tomato year (if they were not irrigating in March through May when the rain was almost nonexistent) or an outstanding year (if they irrigated in spring) I'm hoping for more typical weather conditions next year so I can see how Texwine and Dixiewine perform in the type of weather we normally have. Dawn

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

Suzie, You're welcome. My garden is roughly 10,000 square feet but its size is hard to figure because it isn't a square or rectangular box. It is actually several separate plots of land, and the biggest portion of it is bordered by the woods on the north side, a grove of trees on the west side, and the driveway on the south side. It curves to go around trees, and a big mound of clay that is worthless and which I'd love to have removed, and a little pond for the wildlife. When we fenced it, it took 400' linear feet of fencing, but because it isn't a nice square garden, it really isn't 100' by 100'. It looks like a garden designed by a person who'd been drinking. I should have just hired a guy with a bulldozer to flatten everything to the ground, but I wanted to preserve mature trees and shrubs for the wildlife....so what we have is a crazy garden tucked into a clearing in the woods with fencelines that meander around trees, shrubs, cacti (even they shriveled up and were really dessicated last year), a berm and a pond. I have several smaller garden plots that are more squared off and normal looking, and I grow lots in containers...I have 60 tomato plants in containers, though I am tired of watering them and about to let them go. They're really struggling in all these 100-degree-plus days. I grow so much because I use wide rows 4' to 5' wide with 12-18" pathways, although I confess that the plants spill over into the pathways. I also grow vertically on every bit of the garden fence I possibly can, which explains why I have cantaloupes hanging up there 8' above the ground at the top of the fence. Tomorrow I am going to climb a ladder to harvest the beans growing next to them, and while I am up there I am going to put slings up to support the cantaloupes. Today (and I am laughing at myself here) I found a Moon and Stars watermelon growing on a fence about 4' above the ground. The issue with that is that Moon and Stars is a huge melon. Usually I just plant the little mini-watermelons by the fence and they do just fine when grown vertically. I'm going to have to figure out how to support the Moon and Stars melon as it enlarges. I didn't think I had any Moon and Stars melons in that specific garden plot. It is the Three Sisters Garden with 'Texas Honey June Corn', 'Seminole ' and 'Old Timey Corn Field' pumpkins, 'Worchester Indian Red' Lima Bean, and Red Ripper southern peas. I'm not sure if I planted a watermelon plant there or if it is a volunteer from compost. When I saw the plant climbing the fence a couple of weeks ago, I shrugged and wondered if it was going to be 'Black Tail Mountain' or 'Yellow Baby'. Well it is neither. It has the moons and stars of 'Moon and Stars' so I am sure that's what it is. I do remember squeezing in some birdhouse gourds on the other fence, and a few leftover gourd plants and okra plants at the east end. In the spot where the watermelon is growing? Well, I have Kebarika bush beans there. So, apparently there's a melon there. All of the above explains how I don't plant rows so much as I plant groupings that fill up the space both vertically and horizontally. Even when it is unplanned, it happens. In the big garden my Seminole Pumpkins have escaped from their bed and run 20' eastward, but they aren't growing on the ground. No, that would be too simple. They are running across the tops of the tomato cages of the 'Indigo Rose' tomatoes. Apparently while I was busy canning during the whole month of June, plants began running amok in the garden. Tim can't even see me when I'm in the garden, so he stands at the gate and hollers my name. My cats sometimes hunt me down but often they just walk up and down the adjacent driveway meowing. I tried Square Foot Garden and it was only okay for me. I just am not that structured and regimented in the way I do things, and I felt some of the plant spacing didn't work well in our hot climate, especially with big monster tomato plants. So, after reading John Jeavons book (linked below) I began planting and interplanting using his spacing and find I can get about 4 times the yield I got from traditional row spacing years and years ago. Here's a quick example of how you can get more from your garden. I planted three rows of tomato plants, with each row being about 18' long and with 4' in between the rows. In the middle of that 4', I planted rows of bush beans. The bush beans had matured and had been harvested before the tomato plants were 4' tall, and after that, I yanked out the bean plants and the tomatoes filled in all that space. I often do the same things with carrots, lettuce and radishes underneath tomato plants like a ground cover. It is a way to get multiple crops from one space. I grow all my melons under okra plants. I grow most all my vining crops on trellises and fences. Often the pole beans will climb not only the fences, but any tomato cages or okra or corn plants within reach. I work really hard to get the most from every square inch of space. I always think the garden looks great in May because it is green, lush and yet still soemwhat orderly. Then June arrives and the heat brings explosive growth (as long as there is moisture) and it gets rowdy, wild and out-of-control and becomes a jungle. I continue working night and day to manage the harvest, and likely will make the last salsa tomorrow. I've been running the dehydrator almost 24/7 and may finish drying the Principe Borghese tomatoes this week. After that, there likely won't be that many more tomatoes to harvest and dry at once, although every now and then I get a bunch of SunGolds at one time. I'm sort of moving on now, beyond tomatoes to peppers, trading in salsa-making and other fabulous tomato products for candied jalapenos peppers, jalapenos rings, Habanero Gold jelly and jalapeno jelly. I've also been busy making pickles. Today I made Spicy Pickles using a Mrs. Wage's spice mix that includes jalapenos. I think Tim is going to love these hot, spicy pickles, but they may be too hot for me. Tim looked at the counter a few days ago, with rows of tomato products (Pasta Sauce, Chili Base and Pizza Sauce) lined up neatly in their pint jars while I was trying to figure out where to put them and said "it's starting to look like you're a Doomsday Prepper". I told him no, that I was just a gardener who didn't want to waste a bit of the harvest. Doomsday Prepper indeed! (I do enjoy watching the show, but I am not one of those folks.) My Roma/Villawear tomato press/strainer is one reason I can so much stuff. Without it, the whole process is too time-consuming. With it, I can whip out batch after batch of stuff in the blink of an eye. I never would can this much if I had to peel tomatoes. If I never, ever again have to drop tomatoes into boiling water to begin the tomato-peeling process, I'll be a happy camper. Insanity reigns at our house this year--both in the garden and in the kitchen, but I am having a lot of fun (tiring fun) and getting oodles of food put up. The deep freeze is about 2/3s full, and I will finish filling it up (hopefully!) with okra, frozen peppers and mid- and late-season corn. My big worry has been that fires would start up and would take me away from the kitchen. Now that the tomato preservation is about done, I can relax and not worry much about that. We have had fires, but just not big, out-of-control ones like we had last year, and I've only had to leave in the middle of canning one time, and it wasn't at a critical time when I shouldn't leave. I have my eye on a place behind the garage where I want to be able to plant corn and pumpkins, but the soil needs massive work. I scatter sowed (with no tilling) a deer/wildlife plot mixture there last fall and it all seemed to grow well. This spring when Tim cut it, he came in and told me the turnips had grown entirely above ground. I told him that turnips will pop up like that, similar to onions sometimes (at least in our clay they do) and he told me they'd never been in the ground. I didn't believe him and went out to see...and there they were lying sideways on top of the hard clay soil. I cannot even imagine how much work we'd have to do to make that soil suitable for growing anything, but if we managed to do it, that would give me 1800 more square feet to play with. Dawn