Ive now received three notices about this thread andnormally Inolongerrespond, but I thought Iwouldthis time. My answer to someof you who have asked questions here and now were answered here in March of 2009 but I suppose I can try to go through it again, for those of you who didn't read the earlier posts in this thread and repeated questions. Big Boy F1 was bred by OvedShirfriss when he was at Burpee, one parent was Teddy Jones, an heirloom from the midwest that Burpee scouts if you will, discovered and paid the farmer $24 for exclusive rights for it and that was sometime back in the early 40's since I think Big Boy F1 was introduced in about 1946 without checking that out. italloedthatfarmertobuild a smallgreenhousesohe washappy. And just think how much money Burpee has made on the $24, At the timeJohn Peto was also at burpee and he left, taking seeds with him for Teddy Jones and formed PEtoseed in CA and bred Better Boy F1, a cross between TJ and I don't know the other parent although I do know both Parents of Big Boy F1 b'c Dr. Schifriss told me what they were and said he trusted me to never say what the other parent was and I never have. I knew him quite well and at one time was trying to dehybridize Big Boy to see if I could get out TJ, just to see what it was like. I didn't have to do that, I had abandoned that project b'c I then got an e-mail from someone who worked at Burpee telling me what Teddy Jones was like. I also got to know Dr.Shifriss even better when he went to Rutgers and was breeding some excellent squash varieties and spent one summer with Glenn Drowns at Sandhill preservation in IA advising Glenn, a close friend of mine still now, Oved was lonely out there and used to call me a lot, he still spoke with a heavy German accent and at times it was hard to understand him on squash genetics.At the time Glenn was the curator for Cucurbits for SSE, but he left SSE as I did last year as a listed member. I don't know why the interest here so much on Big Boy and Better Boy, both are still very popular varieties but I liked even better some of the same era F1's such as Ramapo F1 and the two Harris bred ones Supersonic F1 and Jet Star F1. Yes PEtoseed bred Brandy Boy for Burpee as they did many other varieties, They were told by Burpee what Burpee wanted , bred them and then Burpee gave them names. And that b'c Burpee went into bankrutpcy, as I'm sure some of you know, they did some wrong things, they had no breeders left so custom contracted out varieties to PEtoseed for this and that/ Yes, those of you in the South, whether Fl or AL or whatever are going to have more leaf mold and not just with the ones being discussed here and that's b'c of thehigh humidity, and yes, yields can be lower for the simple reason that Humidity can also lead to clumped pollen which is not all that effective, and if just high continued temps, denaturation of pollen even in the absence of high humidity. I was referred here by someone who grew mainly heirloom varieties and Craig LeHoullier was not. Not true at all. For many years I worked closely with the Cornell Coop Extensionion and did did grow both hybrids and OP's b/c they wanted me to do a largeproject on foliage diseases, etc. The operative word for foliage diseases world wide is tolerance, not resistance and the tomato industry adopted the word tolerance when several large scale growers of hybrids said that theirplants came down with diseases, both soil borne and foliage that they were not supposed to do and law suits followed. With repect to Brandy Boy F1 it is presumed that one parent is Brandywine, no one knows which strain/Version and most have assumed the other parent was either Big Boy or Better Boy. Brandywine is pink, the other two are red, red is dominant to pink, so selections could have been made and BB is PL and the only way that could happen is if both parents were also PL since PL is recessive to RL. And both boys are RL, so another issue to think about. And twofolks havec,imed that hey have fronplants that had red fruitsfrom F2 seeds saved from BranyBoy F1 Starting maybe three years ago or so burpee now has hired some breeders and are back breeding some of their own varieties in PA. I was shocked, I tell you, when I received an invitation to the opening of their new facilities. Personally I have never bought seeds from Burpee after I bought plants for a variety I wanted as well as seeds for the same variety for them, they changed the NAME of that variety several times, I grew theplants, the seeds and compared with my own seeds and they were no different. I just rememnered that it was the first time that a well known heirloom OP had been converted to an F1, and I found their F1 plants and seeds to be no different from my own OP seeds for the same variety. They also named several of their varieties about the same as Brad Gates ones which ired a LOT of folks and there was a write in to Burpee complaining about that. OK, I've typed enough and if there are questions I haven't answered and I if I get another notice perhaps I can answer those questions,maybe not, it all depends on the questions. Seysonn has suggested that if I don't want the notices I can opt out but quite frankly I'm not going to do that since if wrong stuff is posted perhaps I can help.but I am NOTgoing to go back to Houzz on a regular basis since I'm a Global Moderator at two different message sites, am still involved in seed offers , Ihave seedproducersnowsinebeinginthiswalkerI cannolongergrowmyowntomatoes asIused to formany decades and have also had several medical issues and am facing two more right now I just remembered that I think it was Hudson who said he doesn't care how many varieties one has grown, my figure on that is 4,000 plus, and how many years one has grown tomatoes, I started helping out on our farm whenI was about 5 and I'm 76 now and said he doesn't care about any of that unless someone posts pictures. I don't for several reasons and if that makes me not to be believed, know well that I don't Tweet, no pinterest, no instagram,no facebook , none of that, and yet I exist and particpitate at 5 different message sites and all is well. <G> All for now, Carolyn

Oh no, my faith may have been shaken, but I'm in no way turning over to the dark side. I don't prune healthy leaves! Boston: I'll experiment with the sawdust this coming season. According to the article, it can be done. I just need to find out how, because Lord knows, sawdust is just not useful for a bonfire. Dave: You're right, a lot of the content in the article is not applicable to a home gardener like myself. However I do think some of the ideas presented in the article are interesting, may be useful, possibly worthy of discussion? I've read people describing tomatoes as having vegetative and reproductive states. This has always confused me since I have never seen these states. Instead, all my tomatoes produce new shoots and leaves, and at the same time produce new flowers and fruit. My understanding of the article is that a particular plant can be viewed as either more vegetative or more generative depending on the ratio of leaves to fruit; and that you can get a balanced plant by raising or lowering the temperature. This is not immediately useful for a home gardener as temperature is beyond our control, but a better understanding of tomatoes and the effects of temperature might come in handy. Daren

bitsya Okay, the zone is very helpful! It HAS been an early spring this year. In this area, we haven't had frost for more than 30 days, and I suspect that was it for this spring. Maybe it's balancing out for last spring when it was so cold and wet. I don't have any tomatoes on my plants but I do have some blossoms about ready to open on three of the eleven I've set out. None of the plants are a mature size. And I still have eight more to plant when they're larger, plus a sucker for a second Goose Creek plant when it develops. Maybe those of us who planted early in this area have been lucky with the weather. At any rate, as you intend to do, I suppose I'd remove some of those babies and leave some to see if it makes a difference in the plant health. Below is a link to a discussion last year about what triggers tomato plants to start blossoming. It's just going to happen when we start them early and they grow at normal rates. Here is a link that might be useful: What triggers blossoming on tomato plants?

"When you read "full sun," it means that a plant needs direct, unfiltered sunlight for at least 6 hours a day. This is the minimum amount of light a sun-loving plant needs to thrive. As you have noticed, the intensity of sunlight varies depending on the time of day. A plant that gets full sun all morning but is shaded in the afternoon has a much different growing environment from one shielded from the sun in the morning but exposed to full sun in the afternoon."