Thanks very much, Carolyn and Dave!! I do not have any sponges left, and starting in a seed tray is not an option. The reason I use the Park's Bio Dome is because I have two curious cats. The Bio Dome has vents and very sturdy domes that they can't seem to get off. I leave the tops off when we are home, but at night, I put the tops back on with the vents open. The first year I started seed in regular flats, I came home one day to complete destruction....the cats had a ball. And I don't have any space in the house that I can close off from the cats and still have room for the plants, and enough light. I have them in front of a bay window and under a grow light. Maybe I'll see if I can rig up some sort of barrier around the seedlings that will keep the cats out. I used 2 seeds per hole and sowed 5 cells of NAR. I also winter sowed some after reading Trudi's website. If that works for me this year, that may be the solution to the cat problem next year. I will try the Chamomile tea also, that sounds like a great idea. One more question, if that's OK, I have read here several posts where people mention either soaking seed or misting seed beds with a hydrogen peroxide solution. What is that all about? Does it boost germination, or fend off fungal problems? Thanks, I have learned so much reading these forums, I am looking forward to a great tomato season!!

Big Zac and Porterhouse grow way bigger than Delicious and taste a lot better too IMO and in my experience. I could care less that Delicious is the "world's record holder". What I am talking about are tomatoes that naturally produce giant fruit all on their own without selective pruning or special fertilizing. I have grown Delicious a couple times. Puny little things compared to the average size of a Porterhouse. Remember, no pruning at all. Porterhouse all by itself yields giant tomatoes. That Grahm guy used special pruning and fert techniques. Carolyn has mentioned Tidwell German, Large Pink Bulgarian and Neves Azorean Red as huge tomato varieties in the past. I have tried all three. While they are all nice, worthy tomatoes to grow with great taste, they didn't beat either Big Zac or Porterhouse for size here. She mentions a few others that I haven't tried that possibly could beat BZ and Portehouse. I am only talking SIZE here. For instance, If I could only grow either a NAR or a Porterhouse to grow, I'd choose NAR due to superior flavor. Big Zac and Porterhouse are the two biggest varieties I've ever tried and beat Delicious in taste and size IMO.

Are NAR and Omar's Lebanese similar? Are there enough differences between them to grow them both at the same time? How do they compair side by side? **** Since I introduced both of them I've grown them a lot but I honestly don't know quite how to answer your question. Are they similar? Yes, both are beefsteak varieties, Omar is a large pink and NAR a large red. Both have strong sturdy plants and both are RL and indeterminates. Both set fruits well when grown by me in my zone 5 area and others in warmer zones have also had good luck with them.Everyone? No way, as Hoosier mentioned, b'c no two people grow their tomatoes the same, use the same amendments or have the same weather in any given season. But they are dissimilar in that the tastes are totally different which you can't appeciate until you've grown them both. Hope that helps. Carolyn

I took the seller of our house to small claims court over the broken dishwasher that she said she'd filed a claim with the manufacturer to get a replacement - and court costs, of course. I prevailed in court, but it really irked me because all she had to do was be honest and simply take the deduction for the cost of a new dishwasher from the price agreed on for the house! She and her agent knew that the thing was broken, and perhaps her agent wasn't aware that she wasn't being forthright about the claim with the manufacturer thing, but she certainly knew she was lying and ultimately had to pay for a replacement AND court costs! It would have been cheaper for her to take the price discount in the amount of a replacement dishwasher! I don't blame the OP for deciding to report her to the state licensing body, it's just unfortunate that the neighbor didn't get the inspection despite the advice they got from the realtor that ultimately led to them deciding not to get one. At this point in my life, I'm not sure that even a squad of legit holy angels descending from heaven to tell me I don't need to get an inspection and that I can take a person's statements about the condition of a property being 'perfect' and 'without any problems whatsoever' is enough to convince me it's absolutely 100% true fact. :P I've had to deal with the consequences and endure being truly irked, I'm just lucky that the stakes weren't say...whether or not the house would collapse on me in the middle of the night (without an earthquake or random sinkhole, those are the kinds of natural disasters you can't expect to know when/where/how bad it will be until it actually happens)...In the previous house there were things that I just had to put up with once they turned up post-moving in and weren't all that big of a deal once I came up with a work-around or means of covering it up to the extent that it wasn't glaringly obvious any time I looked over at the general area...and our current house had the "she lied!" dishwasher, but the fridge she left when she moved was not the one that was there the last walk through but because she was mostly but still in the process of loading up the truck with her stuff, I take responsibility for the fridge-switch-a-roo and for buying the replacement (the one she left was too big for the place in the kitchen that was intended for placing the fridge in and had a broken ice maker). Legally though, you have a limited window in which you will be able to recover any damages that you may be entitled to - otherwise people would be filing lawsuits against the person who built the house 50 years ago, sold it 20 years ago, and now needs a new roof. It might sound silly, but the US is a very litigious country, if someone can think of something to sue over then someone probably has tried to - with and without successfully recovering any losses. The courts have tried to reduce frivolous lawsuits and vexatious litigants are typically barred from continuing to be vexatious after a certain point - the court doesn't like to have its time wasted and it's not long before judges become well aware of those in their jurisdictions that are considered 'frequent fliers' so they can take action.