I'm happy we could get you to weigh in, Jali! As Jay says, taste is a matter of personal preference. I don't know how it could be otherwise. And certainly, the variability of the environment and methods makes a difference as we see with what folks are saying here. I develop prejudices and that's no good. Trying to get things sorted out is fun for me and I'd like to imagine that I gain a broader experience by doing that but being open to something new and avoiding risk at the same time is part of my nature. First off, I want the variety to be "happy" in my garden. The right variety is key to success but there are some that are broadly adapted. Lots of built-in disease resistance has to be important for something that can grow from humid Florida to frigid Minnesota to arid Arizona and every hill and dale in between. But then we have heirlooms . . . you know, some could define an heirloom as a variety that stays in a single location. It is in an environment for which it has become highly adapted after selection over many, many generations. I don't think that any of us could say that we have anywhere close to an ideal tomato-growing environment. And, I know that Jali is happily working on that finding just the right choices for her difficult part of the country. Personally, I was startled and very pleased to find that several early-maturing Mediterranean heirlooms were happy in my garden! I do NOT need to go with some tomato called "Glacial Runoff" or "Siberian Barrens" or something like that. Now, I'm even looking around with greater pleasure and less suspicion at my local environment. Those Minsk tomato seeds are my very 1st purchase of an eastern European variety. Reading some things that Andrey Baranovski had to say about seed he has made available to the West made me realize that Andrey is basically, a very honest guy. If these varieties have that hardiness that Jay talks about but might still have the flavor that I'm looking for - I need 'em! Steve

This is the first year I've grown any from seed, and I overdid it. I'm about 20 miles from Augusta, GA, on the line between Zone 7a and 8b. Hot summers, often dry, Wanted to see which Heirloom types survive in this setting. From Seed Savers Exchange: Cherokee Purple Black Krim Black Cherry From Tomatofest: Mortgage Lifter (red) Arkansas Traveler Opalka Marianna's Peace Stump o' the World Winsall From Burpee: Brandy Boy And in a moment of weakness I bought several plants at a garden center: One each of Druzba, Reisentraube, Park's Whopper, Beefmaster, Rutgers, Marglobe, Celebrity, Super Sweet 100, Summer Set and Goliath hybrid. When I started the seedlings, I found that by far the most vigorous seedlings were the Black Krim, followed by Cherokee Purple and Arkansas Traveler. Don't know if that will translate into better plants, but they were definitely better as seedlings. All of them seem to be doing well in the ground, though.

Nitsua, LOL! Yes, each time I saw this thread title that's what I thought, like one of those carnival games of counting how many gumballs were in the jar to win a prize. I didn't think to calculate either until Deeby asked for a formula to convert her pot size to gallons which is sort of the same thing. Deeby For a 20" top diameter pot, if you don't want to measure the height, bottom diameter and top diameter and get the exact gallons in the convenient online calculator, an estimate is that you have a sort of #20 or #25 pot, the height coming way up your thigh is quite tall. Most 20 inch pots are around 20 gallons, but the formula gives around 27 gallons since I guessed your "half way thigh high" is about 25 inches tall, but that was hard to work with since you could be wearing shoes, measuring the outer lip, or it could be sitting on a saucer, etc. Because pots have different slants from top to bottom, it isn't enough just to measure the top diameter. Yours sounds closest to the #25 tall here which is shorter but a little wider so around 25 gallons sounds reasonable. You can compare it to commercial pot sizes at nursery pots also to get a really good idea of the gallons: Nursery Pot Commercial Sizes The other way to do it is to see if the company/product number is on the bottom of the pot and see if their website has it listed in gallons too. Most do. Volume is what is important to roots, however you wish to measure it, since containers come in all shapes, as long as they are reasonable. PC

Michelle, The book is great. At one point it was out of print and impossible to find and the used copies you could find online were considered rare books and priced accordingly (in the hundreds of dollars) It later was reprinted, and Dr. Cotner himself said that given how many pages the book was (around 400 I believe) and all the photos it contained, it was so expensive to print that he himself didn't blame the publisher for not wanting to put it back into production because it was very expensive to produce "nowadays". He also said at that time that it would be impossible to write/publish a book like that nowadays because of the cost, but you know, the demand for it was so high that additional printings did happen well after he said that. That was likely in the late 1990s or early 2000s when he said that, and I guess publishing costs had soared since it was first published. Kim, If I was gardening in place that was windy like that and it was a permanent place where I was going to be long-term, I'd plant a windbreak around the garden, but 15-20' from the garden so it didn't shade out too much of the garden ground. Windbreaks can be lifesavers when gardening on flat, windy land. If it wasn't a permanent place where investing in lots of large evergreen shrubs or trees was possible, I'd grow a triple row, densely planted, of some sort of large annual plant that would at least provide some windbreak....maybe some of the tall grain-type amaranths (harvest the flowers before they go to seed or you'll have 1,000,001 amaranth plants each year forever after), or some of the more densely-branched tall sunflowers or a thick, dense planting of field corn (its stalks are sturdier than sweet corn), ornamental corn or sorghum. I have used broom corn interpanted with hyacinth beans as a wind break by my yard is somewhat sheltered by woodland on three sides, so the 12' tall broom corn stalks didn't break. Because they get so tall, I do not know if they would work in your windier area. I think the wind might break the stalks or cause them to lodge. If the two of you do not read the local Texas gardening magazines (Neil Sperry's "Gardens" (now only available, I believe, as a digital online publication) at his website, and "Texas Gardener" (believe it is based in central TX but covers the whole state), I recommend them highly. Texas Gardener has a stronger focus on veggies, but does cover other topics as well, and everything Neil Sperry writes and publishes is pure gold for Texas gardeners. The last time I bought a new copy of Dr. Cotner's "The Vegetable Book", I purchased it directly from Texas Gardener Press, one of my favorite sources for books about gardening in this region. Here's a link to their book page: Bookstore at Texas Gardener Press I am out in the garden for a large portion of every day that the weather allows it at this time of the year. Once the real heat sets in and the temperatures are in the 90s and above every day, I spend much less time out there, mostly only harvesting fruits, veggies and herbs, watering, or cutting flowers for bouquets. By then I hopefully have enough mulch on the beds that weeding is not need as often, because you're not going to find me outside weeding once it gets really hot. I do try to keep the garden well-weeded through at least the end of June. After that, when we mow weekly, I dump more grass clipping mulch on top of the existing mulch and that's about it. If we get a rare, cool and maybe misty or drizzly day in the middle of the summer, I'm out in the garden in a heartbeat weeding. We had a great garden year in 2012 and I had tons of tomato plants. Know what that meant? It meant I could spend up to 8 to 10 hours a day in June and July mostly just harvesting. I blame the Principe' Borghese tomatoes for that harvesting fiasco. I had a lot of them that year (for sun-dried tomatoes) and could spend a whole day just harvesting those 12 plants because each one would have hundreds of bite-sized tomatoes ripe and ready to pick and dry. I've stopped growing it now because that was just too much time spent harvesting small tomatoes and also have cut back on how many cherry tomato plants I grow for exactly the same reason. If I ever grow Principe Borghese again, I'll just pull up the plants by their roots when they are heavily loaded with ripe tomatoes and hang them in the garage to dry. (This can work well in a dry climate in a dry summer, but in a more humid year, the tomatoes may rot before they dry.) I had my fill that summer of slaving away in the garden, harvesting all day in 90-100+ degree weather. I'm trying to garden smarter, not harder, these days because I'm not getting any younger and spending all day every day out in the summer heat no longer is an option for me. Evern since the summer of 2011, when I got a mild case of heat exhaustion at least 3 separate times when we were out on fires in 112-116 degree heat, I just cannot tolerate the heat like I once could, and I have to be really careful in the summer because of that. Planting tomatoes as early as possible helps because I'd rather be harvesting and canning the main tomato crop in May and June than in June and July. There's plenty to harvest as it is in the summer months, so getting most of the tomatoes done early means fewer hours out in the hot sun. I also bought a beach-type sun umbrella a few years ago and will carry it out to the garden and stick it in the soil and work in its shade. This works better if I am doing something that keeps me in a relatively small area for a while rather than moving around every 5 minutes. If y'all have too much summer wind, this might not work for you if the wind keeps blowing the umbrella away. Dawn