In previous years I have coddled my tomato babies and used different contraptions to protect them from inclement weather. I usually have great success. This year, I can barely spare 5min away from my baby girl to sneak into the garden to see how the maters are doing. They aren't doing so great. So, from my original list, I have had to do a few replacements with whatever I could find from the "big box" stores or local plant sales. 1.Great White (need a beefsteak) UPDATE - DEAD 2.Purple Calabash (hoping for taste since I liked purple prince) UPDATE - 1 barely alive (Jbox) 3.Green Sausage (novelty) UPDATE - DEAD 4.Purple Prince (LOVE the taste) UPDATE - DEAD 5.Polish Linguisa (need a paste!) UPDATE - Pretty sure it will be dead when I get home today. 6.Black Cherry (hoping for taste and early) UPDATE - Really DEAD 7.Sungold (last year sucked, give it another chance) UPDATE - One of 4 tomatoes I had in 2 J-Boxes(Josho) that is alive 8.Stupice (early) UPDATE - Not sure actually. Suckers are forming where the original branches were sunburned and windwracked (Jbox) 9.SilveryFirTree (for the foliage) UPDATE - I give it 45% survival chance at this stage 10.Oxheart (need a regular red!) UPDATE - ALIVE! One of 4 in jbox. Managed to find - Red Zebra - Amish Paste Box Stores - Lemon Boy - Sweet Million Will probably get something like beefsteak etc. .Will cross my fingers and pray the rest survives!

Seysonn, I really hope you get a good impression. I don't think the size matters since we were both well within the 80 gram to 120 gram range, and taste-wise, it's been a long time since you had fresh tomatoes and I just finished my last ones on March 28: Last Home-grown tomatoes of the 2014 Fall season carried to 2015 Elsewhere you asked about Indigo Rose, I grew a cross of Indigo Rose and vowed not to regrow anything antho-purple (Yuk), and that tomato you can see in the pic, with its slices ending on the top like a line of fallen dominos. I did everything I could to avoid eating the antho tomatoes and let me say I was so looking forward to the kumatoes after reading good things about them to bridge me through. That is completely unfair because I still have fresh the taste of some good home-grown reds on my palate andf they were store handled, no matter what the kumato system claims from seed to shelf, they can't near hold their own to home grown. But a fresh picked kumato? That would be the fair comparison. I got curious and went to the Kumato site and read between the lines on what appears to be their European site: "Moreover, since all the tomatoes marketed under the Kumato® brand grow and ripen under optimum climatic conditions and they are carefully selected before they are commercialised, consumers can rest assured that all the fruits will have the same intensity of taste and concentration of flavour." I studied the wording and decided it is misleading since other places people seem to think they pick them ripe off the vine in one interpretation of this. However it is ambiguous. The claim speaks of "climatic conditions together with growing. That to me is a misleading attempt to get consumers to hear vine ripened in a nice climate, when in fact the climatic is an artificial climate controlled room, like all the other tomatoes. It sounds to me like the claim is that Kumatoes are tough enough to sit around for 2 weeks after ripening and since they are not exposed to cold after green harvest, that is what they have going for them, but no more. Since I think it is an awesome-looking tomato I would be curious to grow it and see just how sweet and juicy it gets, and what I wonder is whether anyone really knows if the F2 holds up the sweetness. One growing tip ... the 'Syngenta system' favors nearly dry farming this tomato to acheive good flavor. In that sense, that could make it an Early Girl knock-off that is a different color and is tough enough to somewhat dry farm and be a shipper. Not a favorite combination of characteristics for me... PC

I don't post here a lot, but I do on the Canadian forums. I lurk here :-) I don't grow a lot of tomato varieties but I do grow for quality. This year I have one plant, grown form a seed of the original Gordon Graham tomato. He has the world's record largest tomato according to the Guinness Book of World Records. Through good fortune and a friend, I was able to trade for just a few seeds from Gordon Graham's world record tomato. I got one to germinate, so I have one tomato plant that is a direct child of his original! I do grow other tomatoes but I'm really excited about this one! We had a very bad tomato year last year with lots of BER. This year I planted the tomatoes in my good lasagne "wine" garden, dug in lots of old manure, a little lime and one Tums tablet in each hole. The same friend who gave me the seeds above, told me that a Tums will help supply the calcium the tomatoes need to help prevent BER. So I'm trying it. It's easy and cheap, so I figured "Why not?" We'll see how it goes. Needless to say, I baby that plant! In addition to that one, I am also growing our own heritage Portugal beefheart tomatoes (see link to pic below), San Marzano, Manitoba, Ailsa Craig, and Rev Morrow long keeper. Here is a link that might be useful:

Here's the "black" ones we'll grow in 2018: Amazon Chocolate BKX (farm seed grow-out for "trueness"; suspected cross; feedback from swaps is very interesting; LoneJack will start our seeds) Black (recommended and growing with other forum members for comparison) Black Hole Sun (Grape) Black Magic Cherokee Purple (on the permanent list) Dana's Dusky Rose Haley's Purple Comet (saladette) Indian Stripe (on the permanent list) Kazachka (cherry - dark maroon oval not the mini beefsteak variant - we love it) Kiss the Sky (saladette) Lila Sari (trial - new to our farm) Mikado Chernyi (trial - new to our farm) Nefertiti (fabulous cherry for us) Ozark Sunrise Sirenevoe Ozero (trial - new to our farm) Vorlon (regrow after several years; growing with other forum members for comparison) Shell 6A