Susan, Some drooping of tomatoes is normal in this excessive heat and the varieties that have the wilty gene will wilt even more than normal tomatoes which do not have the mutated gene or genes. When I see droopy tomatoes I check the soil by sticking my finger into it, and if the soil is dry, I water right then. With all plants, there is a certain wilt point that they reach where they've gone from being stressed to being practically dead, and if they are allowed to wilt beyond that point, they do not recover. When I talk about keeping tomato plants slightly dry to keep them producing better and to keep the fruits' flavor from being watered down, I always try to phrase it carefully so I make it clear I let them "almost wilt". I try to keep that "almost wilting" stage from going to the "wilting" stage since there's a wilt point of no return. I cannot really describe how you know when looking at a tomato plant that it is at that 'wilt point' of no return, but I know it when I see it. I hope your Rutgers is the determinate one and not the indeterminate one. Sometimes they're not labeled correctly and the labels can be confusing. In my garden, the indeterminate one, Rutgers Select (which is the original Rutgers introduced in the 1920s) gets 6-8' tall and Rutgers VFA which is the determinate (or semi-indeterminate) one gets about 5' tall. Both are heavy producers. Stacey, The Tumbling Toms are in 16" hanging baskets and their roots already completely fill the baskets. It kind of makes me wish I'd gone with 20 to 24" hanging baskets. Even with just the 16" basket, the plants are very heavy and it takes a strong support to hold them. I wasn't sure if I would have anything strong enough to support a larger basket. They are great producers and early producers. Today I harvested 3 or 4 dozen Tumbling Tom yellow fruit and about 8 Tumbling Tom Red. I did notice when raising them from seed that the yellow ones were much more vigorous growers, even as seedlings, than the red ones, and that has remained true in terms of productivity. I don't know if the reds will catch up with the yellows or if the yellows are just genetically stronger. Dawn

If anyone has grown either of these varities, can you please tell me which of the two you found to be the better tomatoe, as far as taste, growth, size, etc? ***** I've grown them both but they are so very different and you can't compare sizes but CPE is a small, maybe 5-6 oz while TOx is maybe around 12 oz to a lb. Thessaloniki Oxheart was found at a farmers market and named by Mary-Anne Durkee and I was posting at her site at the time,and did get the seeds but they grew out Grandpa Willie instead, a totally different variety. LOL no question in my mind that it's the TOx you should grow for taste, performance, etc, But there are many heart shaped varieties I think are better based on the feedback I've read on TOx. Clear Pink Early is just that and early varieties simply don't have the taste that later maturing ones do, in my opinion. I trialed that one for SSE when it first camke from the former Russia via their contact there, Marie Danilenko. (I have a number of different tomato seeds and don't know a lot about them, i.e., German Pink, Bonnie Best, Persimmon, Martian Giant, Nicholson's yellow cherry, Gold Medal, Bloody Butcher and Wisconsin 55.) I've grown all but the yellow cherry and the Martian Giant, and GOld Medal is really not that much different than any of the now maybe 100 or so different gold/red bicolors. If you go to Tomatogrowers Supply or Sandhill Preservation, for instance, and maybe the SSE site for Gold Medal and German Pink ( seedsavers.org) you'll find information about the rest, exept for the Martian one and the yellow one, and you can Google those for more info. Or are you looking for folks who have grown those in which case if you go to the search feature at the bottom of this page and enter them, one by one I'm sure you'll find direct feedback, and same for Googling them. I'm not sure what you want to know about all of them but the basics can easily be found by going to the sites I mentioned above. Hope that helps. Carolyn

WhooHoo! I received the big bonanza from Melissa! For Seeds I received: Dill's Atlantic Giant Pumpkins Jack Be Little Pumpkins (great minds think alike!) Big Orange Tomato Coyote Tomatoes Crnkovic Yugoslavian Tomatoes Great White Tomatoes Jerry's German Giant Tomatoes Nature's Riddle Tomatoes (I need to look up these!) Riesentraube Tomatoes Rio Grande Tomatoes Winsall Tomatoes (on my wish list!) World's Smallest Tomato Violet Jasper (another on my wishlist!) Ghostbuster Eggplant (I love white eggplants!) Bride Eggplants (I love white eggplants!) Mini Yellow Bell Emerald Giant Peppers (I've been eying these!) Chinese Giant Peppers (great minds!) Lipstick Peppers (on my wishlist!) Mammoth Dill Little Gem Lettuce (great minds! I thought about buying these for myself too but refrained!) Golden Midget Melons (on my wishlist Little Marvel Peas Caroline Cross Melon Whew! If that wasn't enough! Melissa also sent me Celestial Seasonings Tea Sampler, a pretty tea light candle holder and teas lights (brave of you to send glass through the mail! It made it here in one piece!), and some pretty Mary Engelbret garden notepad. Ok that's enough to spoil any person. However, Melissa had emailed me about having an extra copy of Seed to Seed and asked me if I would like it!!! I've been eying that book as long as I've been seed saving & swapping! Thank you so much Melissa! I'm thrilled!

Ventmarin (a French database with 14,000+ varieties) lists a Marti 51, which they describe as: Variété signalée par la banque de gènes du Canada. http://ventmarin.free.fr/passion_tomates/tomates_m/tomates_m.htm I'd translate that as "Variety reported by the seed bank of Canada." And here is their page for it: http://www.seeds.ca/hpd/cv.php?qtype=source&species=Tomato&sodc=NULL&commerce=NULL&genebank=NULL&action=Go So while there may not be a plain Marti variety, for clarity's sake you could always name your mil's tomato Marti's something. Ventmarin also lists a Marty, a Marta Hybrid, and a Marte Hybrid. I also looked in two huge German tomato databases, TolleTomaten and Tomatensorten. The former didn't have a variety named Marti; the latter got stuck and wouldn't give me an answer. You could try again here: http://www.ethno-botanik.org/Tomaten/Tomatensorten.html