Glacier is a small early tomato that has had many many healthy tomatoes from just one plant. I had tomatoes in early July and I planted it last. I had to prepare the ground so it was in a few weeks late. Now that the big juicy ones are ripe, I am sick of it. I will plant it again for my early tomatoes. Granny Cantrell is a big pink heirloom that tastes and looks good. It was my first really good tomato, I started it early with wall of water around it. I had tomatoes in mid July. I had to eat Glaciers waiting for this, but when I have it I don't eat the little ones. Eva Purple Ball and Pale Perfect Purple make beautiful medium sized pink tomatoes not bad about rotting. I will plant them next year too. Mortgage Lifter is OK, has nice big tomatoes that I had to wait for. Now I am getting lots of them, but it took a while. Black from Tula is pretty and interesting. I may plant it again because I have room. It rots if it gets a split or hole. My friend really likes the taste. I had no luck with Ananas Noir; didn't know when it was ripe and let it rot. My tomatoes grew too close, I don't stake and a tomato that doesn't turn red is too much for my little brain. I don't care for cherry tomatoes; my best was reisentraube. It had a million flowers but was late to set fruit. It is red and tastes pretty good. I don't like my black cherry. I forget where I got the seeds maybe I don't have the true strain they brag about. I don't like its color. Black prince is a medium black; It is OK but I don't care for the color. Celebrity is an indestructable hybrid that has lots of tomatoes. I planted it late so I got in the habit of eating others. When I eat tomatoes I eat the Evas, perfect purples and granny cantrells so I haven't eaten many celebrities. I should give them a try. I will plant them again for insurance. I only have two plants and they are loaded. I pulled up Sophie's Choice.

Jay, It puzzled me too and still does. Your freeze damage occurred in a manner that contradicts almost everything we've been told about freeze damage....like the fact that yours occurred on higher ground and not lower ground. Mine is always the opposite. The year the bed of black tomatoes survived freeze damage that severely injured or killed everything else, they were in the highest bed at the top of my sloping garden. I had thought that maybe you had some wind and it kept the damage from settling in uniformly, so your damage seems even more odd in the absence of wind. I also have had times where I thought the foliage from nearby trees protected some plants, but that didn't happen in your garden either. I guess it is one more oddball thing to add to the whole oddball year. Ilene, I've been thinking about those of you in northeastern OK and wondering what the 2009-2010 El Nino with all its excess rainfall will do to y'all and to your plants this coming spring. It seems like y'all have enough issues with excess moisture most years, and now to have the looming specter of El Nino on top of that.... The only issue with starting seed in the ground is that your whole crop will be very late, and you might not get any ripe fruit until fall. It's that whole pollination thing where the plants need to pollinate while temps are in the right range, and it is doubtful that direct-sown plants would be large enough to bloom while temps are in the right range. Still, you never know....if you have recurring cold fronts next year like we had this year, you might very well get fruit set all summer during the recurring cold spells. I love your description of the friends that remind you of the Baldwin Sisters! I always thought they were so funny. I didn't save any seed from anything because I am always so overwhelmed with trying to keep up with the harvest (more about the latest harvest in a minute) at the same time I ought to be saving seeds, but I can still save some from Tess's later this week because it still has several hundred tomatoes on it. In fact, if it ever stops raining, I need to pick those tomatoes today and dehydrate a bunch of them. First, I'll look at my seed envelope, because I'm thinking it was packed with oodles of seed, so I might not have to save any since there might be plenty from the original seed packet to share. Here's where Tess's Land Race Currant gets interesting: are you ready for a simple lesson in tomato biology? Tess's Land Race Currant, like all currant tomatoes, is not Lycopersicon lycopersicum like most tomatoes. Instead, it is Lycopersicon pimpinellifolium. It has extruded styles on its flowers, so it is very, very prone to cross pollinate. Because of the extruded styles, all currant tomatoes cross very easily with other currant tomatoes--that is one thing I know for sure. What I am not sure about is how readily they cross with tomatoes that are Lycopersicon lycopersicum. Most modern hybrid tomatoes have retracted styles, so likely wouldn't cross with Tess', but some heirloom tomatoes, especially those that have potato-leaved foliage, also have extruded styles so they might cross. And, even with beefsteak types of Lycopersicon lycopersicum, any fruit formed from double blossoms (also referred to by some as megablooms) may be crossed. So, saved unbagged seed of Tess's might or might not give you Tess's---which is why I'm hoping my seed packet of Tess's has a lot of seeds in it that are more likely to be pure. Another interesting thing about Tess's is that it mostly produces red fruit, but is not stable (perhaps because it crosses so easily?) and sometimes you get gold or pink or a sort of rosy-gold fruit. On this year's plants, I've had all red ones though. Either way....whether from the packet or from some seed I can save and ferment this week, I'll send you some Tess's seed this winter when we start exchanging seeds. I have tried to grow Tess's in ever enlarging (diameter-wise) cages and in ever-taller cages. Because it simply won't stop growing, and I hate to prune/top a healthy plant, I am thinking that an arched panel may be the best solution for it. I guess we'll know by this time next year if I'm right. Isn't Jay's plants' damage the oddest thing? I guess we should be grateful, though, that it was hit and miss because at least he didn't lose them all. When green tomato time arrives, I have a recipe for a green tomato cake that tastes like a spice cake, and for fried green tomato parmigiana. We're not mincemeat eaters either, so I don't make tomato mincemeat and I don't care for pickled tomatoes either. Earlier, I said I don't even try to save seed because I always get so overwhelmed by the harvest, which is exactly the case here this summer. The harvest was late but abundant and I have about 150 jars of food put up in the cellar, and an equal amount in the freezers. Looking at it all, I am kind of amazed to think it all came from our garden. Except for a steady flow of smallish numbers of tomatoes...with no more than a dozen or two large ones on any given day....and recurring rounds of peppers, the harvest has really slowed down......until yesterday. I went out to the garden to pick ears from the earlier of the two fall sweet corns, and this is what I ended up bringing inside just before dinner time: Hundreds of Tepin peppers to dry Dozens each of jalapenos and habaneros A good-sized mess of black-eyed peas (the last ones, because I then pulled the vines), A good sized mess of Royalty purple pod beans and a similar amount of Contender bush green beans A modest amount of okra About a dozen tomatoes (large ones only, still need to pick bite-sized ones from the six remaining bite-sized tom plants) and still need to pick big ones today from the containers in the back yard A few dozen ears of corn About a dozen pickling cukes So, today I'll be in the kitchen processing all of these one way or another, although I'm about out of ideas for hot peppers, having already canned pepper rings and pepper strips, frozen plain green jalapenos and roasted red and green chipotles, dehydrated jalapenos and habaneros down into either dried, ground power seasoning or chopped dehydrated pepper flakes, and dehydrated tepins. I've also made several batches of Jalapeno Jelly, Jalapeno Gold Jelly, and Habanero Gold Confetti Jelly. I am really getting sick of peppers. I guess I could make more salsa--I think we have plenty, but DS thinks we need much more. I could make pepper ristras, but in this humidity, they'd likely dry on the outside and mold inside. So, I guess I'll just make more of the same stuff I've already made....and I haven't made any vinegar/pepper sauce yet, so that's a possibility. The second fall corn should be ready to harvest in 10-14 days so I guess we'll know in a couple of weeks if it has beaten the frost and matured, or if the frost gets it first. I'm hoping for another frost-free month so I can harvest a lot more beans and cukes, but the rain/clouds aren't helping because they stall without sunlight and some heat. In a way, it is nice to have bowls and bags of produce stacked everywhere to process again, because the harvest really has dwindled down. Harvesting the last of the purplehull pinkeye peas was bittersweet--I hate to see the harvest end, but they produced copious amounts of peas from July through October, so that's a pretty good run, and we ate them almost daily 'in season' and still have plenty put up in the freezer for winter. I really need more cukes in order to make a batch of pickles, but the others aren't enlarging very much in the absence of sunlight. I guess I could make a half-batch of something. So far, the only pickled cukes I've done have been whole Dill pickles, bread and butter slices, and sweet pickle relish, so I am hoping to get enough cukes to make dill spears, dill relish, kosher dills and bread-and-butter stackers before the cucumber harvest ends. I tried to help myself in terms of NOT having an overwhelming harvest to process by saving pickling cukes and bush green beans for fall, and it helped a lot. I don't think I could have handled the harvest I had in July-August if I'd had to deal with cukes and bush beans at the same time. Still, because the tomatoes produced great, if late, and the peppers were overachievers (and still are, which makes it tempting to just pull the plants now and put an end to my pepper misery) month after month, I still had weeks where every flat surface in the house had piles of produce waiting to be processed, or in some stage of being processed. I wish there were a way to spread out the harvest more evenly but you really can't.....the veggies produce when they produce and that's just how it is. In a year like this, I really think I could produce almost an entire year's supply of veggies here....but, then, most years are not like this...most have half the rainfall we've had so far this year, so I should be grateful for the non-drought years because they are fairly rare. Still, I'm at the point where I never want to look at another pepper again....and my jalapeno plants are still heavily loaded. The rain, by the way, continues to fall, and we've had thunder and lightning since the early morning hours, but nothing violent. Dawn

I have Early Girl, SuperSweet 100, Delicious, Brandywine, and Everlast for this year. Early Girl always does great for me, I found some Bloody Butcher seeds at a nursery and next year I will start those from seed since several people have written that they like it better than early girl. I bought the Early Girl a few weeks ago at a local nursery and it is now showing bloom buds coming. I bought the SuperSweet100 at the same time. I hope its good, I alway get Sweet 100 and got the supersweet version by mistake. I found a Brandywine seeding at one of the nurseries I haunt. Cost me 3.89 for a 3 inch tall plant. grrrr I found some seeds and next year will grow my own. I have never grown this and am seeking an old fashioned beefsteak that is sandwich sized and has flavor to die for. I hope this fills the bill. A different nursery had Delicious. I had seed planted for this one but I bought it anyway. It is showing yellow on blossoms and it is only about 12 inches tall. So it is showing promice for early production. I found some Everlast seeds in the burpee specialty seeds at lowes and bought both packets they had. I have a couple of seeds planted. I cant find anything about this variety on the web. According to the package its a long keeper. Next year I am going to start all seeds in January. Does anyone have any extra Brandywine Suddeth seeds (sp) for trade? Or any other huge yummy op indeterminate for trade? I can go thu my seed box and see if I have anything to interest you. I know that I have Oregon Spring and a few other cold crop ones. pam

Steve, Here is the link to Rev 1.9 of the EarthTainer Construction Guide. http://earthtainer.tomatofest.com/pdfs/EarthTainer-Construction-Guide.pdf If you are making smaller units like an 18 gallon size, you don't need the 2 Aeraton Bench supports, as the Bench itself will support the wicking basket. For that, you can use a 4" tall Deli container from the Supermarket, or even cut down a plastic coffee container to 4" high. Just take a small diameter drillbit and go "Rambo" on the sidewalls and bottom to let the water in. spaml, Regarding ingredients, all you need is a light, soiless type of Mix, some small pine bark pieces, and some inert material like Perlite. The idea is to not have the Combo Mix compact down, which would then not allow air to enter. In dirt gardens, worms and other insects provide the tunneling that brings amounts of air to the plant's roots. Regarding Lime and fertilizer, while it is not necessary to use Lime, it does inhibit Blossom End Rot. If you are growing subsistence crops, adding Lime probably is not necessary. The EarthTainer fertilizer is not "exotic" in that any type of fertilizer or manure could be workable. Quantity and application frequency would vary by crop type and local weather conditions. I helped out a Church group that built 10 EarthTainers at an orphanage in Haiti in 2008, and they had to improvise with locally available materials. With some research, old 55 gallon drums could even be adapted with a bit of trial and error. Raybo Here is a link that might be useful: Rev 1.9 EarthTainer Construction Guide