I live near Haddonfield, in Camden county, NJ and am trying my hand at growing figs for the first time this year. I got one tree (variety unknown - maybe Celeste?) at a local farmer's market last September. Per instructions I left it outside 'til the leaves fell and then wintered it over in the basement - but it started growing! Anxious to get it in the ground I made the mistake of planting it in the side yard (western exposure) in early April. We'd had some quite warm weather that fooled me into thinking spring had come early. It had not. The tree suffered terribly in a windstorm with sustained winds over 40 mph and the snow that hit a week later. losing all its leaves and killing the growing tips of all the shoots. The good news is that the tree sprouted new shoots from four of the five "trunks". It is now doing just fine and enjoying a bit of a growth spurt, although I'll be surprised if it yields any fruit this season. Today I purchased a second fig tree. This one is a Hardy Chicago from Lowe's. I put it into a 12" plastic pot where it will stay for at least the first year or so. I plan on bringing this one into my enclosed but unheated porch next winter. A friend and neighbor also has a fig tree of unknown variety that has survived one winter outdoors. I'll try and get a cutting or two from her to plant next year. I look forward to seeing which one performs best for me.

Jan, I assumed they were under contract but given the important role they're filling in the lives of those kids, I bet your son and daughter-in-law wouldn't pack up and come home tomorrow even if they could. I so admire the work they're doing and hope and pray they remain safe. I am glad your volunteer firefighters were able to stop the fires that burned onto your place from doing worst damage than they did. I appreciate all our volunteer firefighters too. I see them put themselves on the line time and again to stop a fire, save people from dangerous situations like fire, flooding, icy highways, etc., and even venture into lakes and rivers to search for drowning victims. They have a remarkable kind of courage and "can do it" spirit. Through my involvement with our fire department, I've met so many remarkable heroes from all over our county and from outside our county as well. Down here along the Red River, it is not uncommon for firefighers to cross the river to help their fellow firefighters on the other side of the river, and I know that is true in all border counties as well. When I take our firefighters cold drinks, snacks and meals, they always are so grateful that someone is looking out for them. I tell them over and over again that we appreciate them and that making sure they have cold drinks and food is just a tiny way to say "thank you" for all they do. I am in awe of their willingness to protect not only people but also their property and wildlife as well. Carol, Tim uses OKFire a lot, and I've used it for other info, but haven't used the satellite maps much until the last couple of days. When you're at the OK Mesonet page, clicks on the "Programs" category. From there, click on "Wildland Fire Managment" and that will take you to the OKFire main page. Once there, you can click on "Satellite" and use the menu it brings up to see various satellite images of fires. I haven't spent enough time on those pages to understand what all the data shows, but I could tell it was showing us a lot of fires and smoke. We have used the Prescription Fire Planner pages before, and I often use the OKFire page to check the fire conditions from my phone when we're out at a fire and the Incident Command officer is wanting to know windspeed, humidity levels, etc. The satellite stuff is new to me and I'm going to try to figure out more of what it shows when I have time. Dawn

Arizona Sooner, It is odd how tomatoes perform differently from location to location, and I have better results from some varieties some years than others. So much is dependent on the weather when you're growing tomatoes. I have grown both Radiator Charlie's Mortgage Lifter and Estler's Mortgage Lifter and most years they have performed very well for me, although Estler's has produced more fruit early on and Radiator Charlie's produced a decent yield, but fairly late. And, I should clarify that by saying that the Radiator Charlie fruit were fairly late to ripen----I consider it a late-season tomato here, usually ripening no earlier than mid-July to early August for me here in extreme southcentral Oklahoma. In order to have ripe fruit in July, it did bloom/set fruit in the May-June time frame, and maybe even in April in those years when I set it out in mid- to late-March and didn't have a late freeze set it back. It just takes RC forever to ripen. Estler's ML was much earlier and much more productive and I think I'll probably put it back in my growing rotation for next year. Sungold and Sioux have done well for me although Sioux is later than many of the other varieties I have in my garden. I grow SunGold every year and it produces all summer long here in very hot and dry conditions. I have Mountain Fresh Plus started for the fall, and Creole had serious disease issues the two years I grew it so I didn't give it a third chance here. Cherokee Purple and Black Krim have been two of our favorite tomatoes ever since the first year I grew them, so for at least a decade now I guess, but have been bumped out of the growing roation by Indian Stripe and True Black Brandywine, both of which produce earlier and heavier yields and both of whom produce better in the extreme summer heat. Indian Stripe is believed to be closely related to Cherokee Purple and it is incredibly similar, but better in flavor, quality and production as grown here in my garden. My climate is significantly different from Jay's (his is significantly drier than mine almost every year) and so is my soil (he has sandier soil and I have clay) and that probably accounts for the different results. Plus, most years (knock on wood) I am able to plant a month or so earlier than he can in his colder zone. With tomatoes, too, timing is everything. I always get the best fruit set from plants set out in mid-March through mid-April. Anything that goes in the ground later than that doesn't produce as early or as well. Remember though that I am as far south as you can go in Oklahoma and still be on the right side of the Red River. Were I any further south or west, I'd be in Texas, so I'm in zone 7 and can plant somewhat earlier than y'all can in zone 6. If it were my Mortgage Lifter, I'd be patient and wait for fruit set. Often, it is just when you are giving up on a plant that it finally kicks in and starts blooming heavily/setting fruit. You can encourage the fruit set by thumping the individual blossoms or by giving the plants a firm shake. I have found this works best for me if I do it in the very early morning hours before it gets too hot. I have better luck with shaking, too, than with thumping. The flavor and texture of Mortgage Lifter are outstanding and it is worth waiting for. I am a little concerned about this week's temperatures. Here where I live we're going to be in the upper 90s, but even if temperatures this week inhibit pollination, cooler weather that is expected this weekend will give our tomato plants a chance to pollinate. Other ways you can encourage fruit set in this heat is to lightly mist your plants--especially the flowers in the early morning to cool them down, and even partially shade them with shade cloth during the worst of the summer heat. Be sure the ML is not getting a fertilizer that is high in nitrogen. More than many other varieties, I've noticed ML tends to go nuts on foliage production if it is fed nitrogen and it probably does that at the expense of the flowers. If you feel like all of your tomato plants are really underperforming, you can try to give them a quick boost with a fertilizer that is meant to encourage flowering. A lot of the folks who grow giant tomatoes for competition give their plants a bloom booster fertilizer early in the growing season to encourage flowering. I don't know if a bloom booster would help tomatoes this late in the growing season and with serious heat already here it might not help, but it probably couldn't hurt them either. Dawn

Hi Barb, Ive meant a couple times to post hereÂand havenÂt gotten it done. This time I will! First of all, I agree with almost all of the recommendations youÂve already gotten hereÂand enjoyed reading and laughed at many of the comments! Just not too sure about a bathtub full of manure in a bay window!!! I agree with David, and I finally conceded the point this year, that when the temps get cold in late summer or early fall, the plants pretty much just stop developing. For years I covered and uncovered and covered and uncovered trying to give them "a little more time," but IÂve decided itÂs really not worth the effort. I leave them out as long as possible until weÂre getting freezing temps, and if we get a nite or two of anomalous freezing temps, when itÂs pretty certain itÂs gonna get warm for a while again, IÂll cover them, but when the temps are clearly getting cold every nite and staying fairly cool/cold during the day, I now call it quits! I think youÂre far better off trying to "extend the season" in spring by starting them inside really early and gradually potting them up into gallonÂor biggerÂpots until itÂs warm enough to put them outside. To do that successfully, youÂd (your brother!) probably need to have a lite setup, and if he considers doing that, florescent lites work very well. If you hang them on chains, you can adjust them to keep them just a couple inches above the plantsÂwhich will keep them from getting all weirded out (a technical gardening term!), and the foliage can even grow up "into" the lites and it wonÂt be burned with florescent like it would be with incandescent gro-lites. So if he has a place to do that, he can be planting relatively large plants outside for a head start. If they start to bloom inside, they can easily be hand pollinated with a small (childÂs) paintbrush, and any tomatoes already on the plant should easily survive transplantation. Also, as David mentioned above somewhere, you want to bury as much stem as possible when you plant them outÂor even when youÂre transplanting them into larger and larger pots. Tomatoes are one of the few plants that will root all along the stem, so the more deeply you bury them the better root systems they develop and theyÂll be able to support the foliage and fruit better. When planting up to a bigger pot or outside, remove a few of the lower leaves and bury the plant all the way up to the lowest remaining leaves. IÂve never used them, but know people who use and swear by Walls-O-Water. I bought some a couple years ago but just never got around to using them! My bad! But I really do believe they can work wellÂtho if he grows plants pretty big inside, they may already be too big to fit in a WOW. I also agree that itÂs best to pretty much ignore comments about the flavor of different varieties. As near as I can tell by reading yearly reports around hereÂand from my own experienceÂthe flavor you get from the same variety can vary widely depending on the growing conditions in any particular yearÂand can also vary widely from location to location, a/k/a differing soil conditions. Pick some varieties that seem like they might do well in his area, and see how they work outÂand if theyÂre really, really good one year, donÂt be real surprised if theyÂre NOT really, really good the next year! Whatever you/he gets, home grown tomatoes are going to be SO much better than anything you can buy in a store, that the subtle differences arenÂt going to really make much difference! One thing I think he might tryÂthat I donÂt think anybody else has recommendedÂis to grow some cherry tomatoes. In my experience you get ripe tomatoes much more quickly than with the big varieties, and most cherry tomatoes produce a LOT of tomatoes! I also agree with DavidÂthis seems to be my nite to be agreeing with David!Âthat soil testingÂunless he seems to have some sort of a catastrophic conditionÂis pretty much a waste of time. As he said, the soil for most of us varies so much that you can test it in one corner (even in a small yard) and get completely different results in another corner. As has already been suggested, just keep adding more and more organic matter each year. Our soils are mostly some combination of clay/sand/gravel, and lots of organic matter will help any soil composed of those things. Then, if things arenÂt developing properlyÂfor reasons other than the coldÂpossibly a soil test in a particular area would be called for. But when it gets right down to it, most plants seem to be able to find what they need in the soil theyÂre planted in. IÂve been growing tomatoes for several years now in pretty heavy clay, and as long as I keep them well watered in the summer, they do ok. Soil testing at this point might just get him worrying about something he doesnÂt need to worry aboutÂand get him spending a lot of money "correcting" something that doesnÂt really need to be corrected. One suggestion I do have for "extending the season" is in how you store the tomatoes when it finally does get "too" cold out. If he has a garage or out building (or possibly a basement) that stays cold but doesnÂt freeze the tomatoes can be cut down, still on the vine, and hung where they will ripen slowly over a couple months. These are the few I grew this year hanging in the garage the day I cut them down. In November it got TOO cold outÂthey were going to freeze even in the garageÂso I cut them off the vines, put them in layers of newspaper in a styrofoam cooler "to keep them warm," and am still eating them. When hung, all but the smallest, undeveloped ones will eventually ripen, and while they may not be quite as good at the ones that ripen outside, theyÂre still way, way better than store bought ones! This is one plant from last year that was also hung sometime in September, but this pic was taken on November 11, and I was able to keep them "hanging" until they were gone. And this is some of last yearÂs cherry tomatoesÂalso on November 11. Here are a couple reference sites he might find interesting. The first is a Cornell site which gives you lists of tomatoes by different qualities. I have it set on the list that shows them by days to maturity, starting with the shortest season ones first (you need to scroll down past the ones marked "NA" which are varieties for which they donÂt have a DTM.) Down a little ways you get to Polar Gem which says itÂs 40-50 days. I didnÂt make up the list! DonÂt shoot the messenger!!! The first few are determinate, which I never grow! And I donÂt know anything about 99.9999999% of these varieties! The second siteÂoriginally posted by JaliÂis a list of nine hundred and twenty seven kazillion different varieties where you can look up a bunch of information by variety name. When I first saw this list I almost fell over in a state of apoplexy! I never, in my wildest dreams, would have thought there were THAT many varieties of tomatoes!!! This listÂonce you get over the shock!Âalso gives you sources for seed of the various varieties. Yeah, some of us might be mater challenged, but I donÂt know of anybody around here whoÂs gonna give up on trying to grow them. As a matter of fact I think the more mater challenged somebody is, the better they taste for the ones that do ripen all the way on the vine! No Fear! Never give up! Full speed ahead! Kenny, maybe if growing stuff in your manure filled bathtub doesnÂt work, you could just add water and take a bath in it. Bet that hot man-your-ay would keep the water nice and warm! You know youÂre tired of winter when...... youÂre out in the yard weeding in shortsÂand you suddenly realize itÂs snowing out! IÂm SURE itÂll get warm out againÂsometime, Skybird