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

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.

I just harvested my first batch. They were not quite ripe, so hopefully the flavor will develop a bit more. So far, a bit bland, neither sweet nor tart, but really not bad. The texture was slightly mealy, so I think these would be better suited to saucing or drying versus eating in a fresh salad. I chose this variety because I heard it would do better in hot dry conditions as compared to other varieties. I did not grow them in my garden; I planted one beside an apple tree so that it could piggy back on the same drip line. That tree gets watered no more than once a week. I rooted the suckers from that first plant and started about twenty more plants throughout the orchard. None of my plants have been bothered by any bugs or birds - not one nibble. They all seem to be quite happy with minimal watering and no added fertilizer or any ammendments whatsoever. So, while this is not the most delicious tomato I have had so far, it is heavy bearing, tolerant or dry conditions and heat, doesn't mind poor soil. The only thing I did after transplanting them was cut off suckers and let them use the tree stakes for vertical support. Since I let them go sort of wild all over the orchard, I will have a lot and plan to sun dry most of them.

Hi Lionheart: Thanks for your suggestion. I'll do my best. The biggest challenge is that none of the online survey tools were designed for so many potential choices (there are thousands of known tomato varieties). As a result, I can't just report the data using the survey providers online reports. I need to export it into Excel, manually adjust the data to align it into a single column, and then export it to a data base program where it can then be sorted by variety. I'll also need to make some manual adjustments as folks will rate a tomato and call it "Green Zebra" and others will rate the same tomato but call it "Zebra Green". I'll need to do this each time I update the data to include new respondents. It's going to be a pain in the neck and that's why I'm only promising periodic updates and not instantaneous reporting. Once we get to 100 completed surveys, I'll do the first report. On day one we had 17 completed and some folks that looked but did not complete it. Please encourage folks to take a few minutes to take the survey as I think this will really be a valuable resource. -Mark