Yes - I now grow the 'mater plants where the cat cannot get to them. Mine ate the tops off my seedling starts one year - just chewed every top clean off and left sticke - what a jerk! So sorry about what happened to you, and yes I think you will have to play a guessing game now. By the way, it is not possible to keep cats off counters, I have found.

Mine is just as bad! I had to start over because she decided to poo in one of the seedlings tray this year. And now she's knocking over the styrofoam cups that the little babies are in. Garrrh! Good luck on your guessing game

I don't know if you can figure them out but I think I can. Plus Matina is PL. And not everything on your list is red.

Ill say a prayer for those folks at VA Tech.......but not not a stupid cat.....ever! get a grip man!!!!!!

Blane, I didn't ask you to pray for my cat. I asked for help finding him so I can kill him.

By the way, I live in Virgina, so the massacre happened in my own "bakyard". Please don't joke about it. Everyone here is very distraught. For you it's the national news and an ocassional update. For us, it's on the local news 24/7, and the national news is our local news.

Back to the cat issue...I can't help with your identification but this gives me a chance to commiserate. My dumb a** cat liked my onions!! She chewed off the tops of all of them! And had the audacity to not even hide! She really had to do some acrobatics to get to them under the lights too.

I understand your pain!!

My other Dumb A** cat loves my mini roses. He shears them down the dirt. I don't even understand how he finds them. I hide them from him when I bring them home and I don't let him see me putting them on the counter. But he always know.

Bad cats. They're lucky they're so cute. When they do something wrong they just look at me with those big eyes and say "what mommy? Did I do something naughty? I love you."

Hey man I wasnt JOKING at all......and my thoughts and prayers are with Ya....so lighten up......besides.....

This is a tomatoe forum not a cat forum...right?

The cat knocked over my TOMATOES. See? Tomatoes. Now I need to identify my tomatoes. See? TOMATOES.

Hey man, lighten up dude, get a grip man!

If you don't like the topic then move past it and don't read. It's that simple. Apparently you are the only one that has a problem with this.

Big Zac, Anna Russian and German Red Strawberry will be very easy to recognize when they mature. And I think Matina is your only PL, and Winsall is pink while Rutgers is red, leaving Watermelon Beefsteak, which by name alone should be easy to ID. ;-)

Don't kill the cat. Cats are not social animals and have no sense of rank. The cat doesn't have any sense of you getting to decide where he's allowed to go. And they are curious about smelly things like tomatoes.

Try a squirt bottle with water to squirt the cat when he's doing something you don't want him to do. That's what my mother does. She used to smack them but she's getting soft in her old age.

Consider it an opportunity to assess your tomatoes blindly. I am always worried about being prejudiced by a name or an enticeing description.

But I think several of your tomatoes should be easy to identify, some of them probably already. Look for the ones with coarse-looking, somewhat rugose, less-divided leaves. That one's Matina. German Red Strawberry you'll be able to identify by the epinymous size and shape of its fruits. Watermelon Beefsteak has large (~2lbs) fruits with ribs, giving it an overall shape like a slightly flattened pumpkin.

Don't give up on mangled seedlings. They have pretty good powers of recovery if given some TLC. Tomatoes produce aventitous roots pretty easily. I've saved a number of casualties by getting roots to grow past kinks in stems.

My sad, sad condolences to the loved ones of victims of Virginia Tech. I'm still misty-eyed over it. What a waste of life.

Atash - unfortunately, I have way to many. I can't grow them all. I have 23 varieties and I planted 10 of each. I was going to pick the healthiest of each variety and plant one in the ground(and give away the rest).

But now I can't figure which is which. If I pick the 10 best plants it's possible I'll only be representing 2 varieties. That's my dilemma. But they are such beautiful little plants and I can't bear to get rid of them.

Ay-yay-yay. Now I understand. Pick out the Matinas (the ones with rugose, less-divided leaves). That leaves 22 varieties x 10 = 220 plants. You want one each of the others.

I am sorry but I have been out of college too long. Once upon a time in my life I could have told you how many tomatoes you need to choose randomly to have xx probability of getting at least one of each (you know, the same way pollsters figure out how many people they need to poll to get a representative sampling of the population). I've thought about it but I just can't remember the formula. Never used it past the homework assignment.

Maybe I should post it on my website to challenge my readers to come up with the answer.

In any case you'll probably get the greatest variety picking them randomly. I would ignore any real runts, tho.

Good luck and I hope you enjoy whatever tomatoes you end up with.

Luckily The varieties were divided into 3 trays. 1 tray is for hybrids, and 2 trays were identical plantings of 12 varieties of heirlooms. Unfortunately, the tray that was knocked over was doing 5X better than the one that survived. I just don't want to throw away my best plants.

A few years ago, my cat chomped off the tops of my seedlings. Had to start all over. I now tent my seedlings with some mesh material, I think it's the stuff they make brides veils out of. In any case, try this.

http://wintersown.org/wseo1/Tomato_Leaf_Scans.html

Maybe you could just compare the other trays with the one that got knocked over? When they're tall enough to see the leaves?

WELL !! So you think cats can mess you up. I carried out my plants this spring and my dogs jumped me to see what was in the tray. All organization was lost so I planted anyway. Then another problem I had was someone digging up the plants as soon as I planted them. After carefull watching of my crops I finally found the culprit. This is what I found. Now, does she look like she would ever dig up my toms, beans, beets, zuccs or chards?

{{gwi:1318383}}

She's healthier than most people on the planet and my Lab is her biggest helper. But I'd keep them before my veggies. :>) LOL is all we can do. Just crazy crazy best friends.

Rory

Bear in mind that cats control rodents (chipmunks, squirrels...) that would otherwise eat the fruit. You win some and you lose some.
OTOH, what mixed up my plants this year was the family crew that planted them - they can't seem to realize that the labels are there for a purpose.. I ended up with one Kellogg's Breakfast and two Opalka - would have really liked more of each and less of other kinds. But then free labor is hard to come by. As I was reminded when I complained that they weren't spaced far enough apart.

I once put a broccoli seedling on my railing and went to gather some stuff up before I went outside to plant it. I came back to find my sweet little girl cat (right now purring in my lap) helping herself to a nice fresh salad.

Grr! Cats like broccoli?? Most humans don't like broccoli, and cats are carnivores! I took the seedling back up to put it under lights where it could grow another leaf or two before I planted it. It's doing fine, actually. So's the cat. I did not kill her. She's too cute. I just yelled at her.

My spare room is a cat-free zone. That's where my quilting, my plants, my crocheting, and all those other delicate items stay, and the cats aren't allowed in.

My thoughts and sympathies re: the Virginia Tech shootings. I have a similar back yard. I'm from Colorado.

The problem arises when you pay more arrention to the plants than to your cat. They get jealous. I guess he taughr you a lesson in feline behaviour.

This season I had a similar identification problem, but no cat to blame it on!

It's not gonna be easy, especially when seedlings are small, but pay attention to every small detail of the leaves. You will be able to match up some of them easily,
like the potato-leaf Matina.

Others are going to be a challenge. I had a full size Celebrity and Early Girl growing in the same pot; no matter
what features I focused on, I could find leaves from both plants that had that same feature. Fruits were different, but I understand that you want to identify them well before that.

Gary

tomatoes4ever

Did you catch that cat and kill it yet. It has been 6 months.

Alright, since you called me by name, I'll let myself be dragged back into this thread.

Puppy (You know him as "dead cat") has been on his best behavior since then and is on probabion. He keeps doing cute things so he keeps getting a stay of execution. Some of his less cute photos are below for reference.

As for the plants, I ended up using my backp tray which had been neglected and not given a good spot in the sun. But at least I knew the varieties. Thank god I planted that.

I've had a good harvest this year and everything turned out well.

And they all lived happily ever after.....

Cute kitties! (when they're sleeping)

Hey, Lilacs, if I don't grow wheat or oat grass for my cats, they eat the houseplants. 'Course, never heard of a cat eating broccoli!

tomatoes4ever

I knew you were an old softie. I was more concerned if he ran away. Glad he is sleeping at home. Now be nice to him. He wants you to grow some tomato plants for him next spring.

My new puppy dog made a mess this year in the garden. I never scolded her. She was always just having fun running through the garden and rolling in it. Too much to mention all summer.

What gets me mad is when she takes a potted plant and knocks it out of the pot and chews up the pot to useless. The plant dies and the pot is ruined. the potting soil is all over the place. She will take the pot and run around playing with it. Or she chews on the plant and runs around with that. all a mess.

But I love my puppy dog and would not scold her. She is my baby.

She's precious! What a beutiful dog. That's not fair. I want to squeeze like and kiss her. Is her name "Charmin"?

Adorable kitties! Yes, how could you stay mad at a face like that?

One of my cats ran off Saturday. I was devastated! I was finally able to coax him back into the house Tuesday night. He's the brother of the broccoli-eating cat.

I hugged him to within an inch of his life.