Yes, Connie, any bloom counts. I've just been oohing and ahing over a quarter-inch flower on the windowsill cactus. Catrose, this is a great time of the year to live in Texas, but when your roses are peaking, ours will be sad, brown-edged crispy critters. I love crocus, too, Kate, but they're something else Dallas doesn't do well. They'll last maybe a couple of years here before deciding it's too darn hot. Molly, how big does Spice get for you? I'd love to be able to shoehorn it in somewhere. I agree, Melissa, that not all zone 8's are created equal. Even the pros here can't grow roses to the perfection that you do, or the lucky folks who in Oregon and Washington. Maybe summer temperatures should be taken into consideration as well. Kathy, Martha G was my first OGR. I went to the nursery to get a Knockout but saw her instead, and that led me to this forum. How lucky was that!

Jay, I am married to a former Pennsylvanian and he still has relatives there who garden and every summer I envy their cool temperatures (you know, they think 85 degrees is hot) and their usually abundant rainfall. When we go there to visit in summertime, everything is so lush and lovely that it blows my mind, especially compared to how roasting hot and tired everything looks in this part of the country at the same time. On the other hand, Late Blight seems to be on a tear there the last few years, so their beaufiful crops can fail suddenly. Marcy, That's a great list from the Kerr Center. Thanks for linking it. Susan, I think each of us adds/drops varieties for many reasons. After growing tomatoes for 25 years on my own and for at least 15 years with my dad prior to that, I'm just through with the massive experimentation. The truth is that out of every 20 or 25 new (to me) varieties that I try, maybe one or two is worth putting into the permanent growing rotation. So, rather than constantly looking for something new, I'm trying to refine the grow list and weed out those that perform least well in a broad range of conditions. I've reached the conclusion that there really aren't many, or maybe not any, incredible undiscovered varieties out there that taste/perform significantly better than what I've already tried....so I've stopped looking. I had high hopes for the Brandymaster series, likely because it is so tempting to believe there could be anything that could match Brandywine's flavor. They've performed so poorly here that I doubt I'd see a better performance next year or the year after. While many of you may be seeing significantly hotter or drier weather this year than in your average year, for us here in southcentral OK, our rainfall has been exactly 'average' for the year to date and so have our temperatures. If anything we've had slightly lower temperatures, in general, in Love County than we usually have although higher than average heat indices. So, for me, this is a pretty typical year except the real heat arrived in mid-May instead of late June so we got hot earlier, but not necessarily hotter than average...just earlier than average. A tomato variety that didn't perform well in what was a fairly typical year here at our place this year likely wouldn't perform any differently next year. In Oklahoma we have a wide range of average annual rainfall....some folks may average 15" of rainfall per year in western OK while others in eastern OK may average 50-60" or more. Humidity varies widely as does soil type and pH. So, what grows well for someone in highly alkaline soil and water in western OK may not grow nearly as well for someone in eastern OK with entirely different weather and soil. I enjoy looking at everybody's lists and hearing how different tomatoes perform for different people but I know that works well in areas drastically different from mine may not work well here. Growing in containers is much more complicated. First of all, nothing that I grow performs as well in containers as in the ground. Heat and pests hit container-grown plants much harder every year than those in the ground. The grasshoppers have completely stripped my container tomatoes of every leaf and fruit, but have only done sporadic damage to in-ground plants. It is the same thing with spider mites....only the container plants have had issues with them this summer. For me, container-grown tomatoes are great from Jan. or Feb. through the end of June or early July. After that, I might as well yank out those plants and toss them on the compost pile because they're toast. Last year, the tomatoes in containers did somewhat better than they usually do....but we had much higher than average rainfall and much more rain/clouds/cool weather than we see in an average summer. I'm looking for plants that perform best in the worst of conditions, not the best ones, because more often than not, we get the worst conditions every July and August. In containers, I plant tomatoes that can tolerate the heat and the restriction of their root growth and still perform. That means I often grow tomatoes in containers that I don't consider 'good enough' to plant into the ground....stuff like Better Bush and Husky Red Cherry. I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm just at the point that I want what produces best for us here, and I don't want to keep looking for something 'better' because I don't think there is anything out there that's really that much better than our tried and true varieties that make our grow list most years. For a long time, I gardened for fun....trying any and every thing that interested me. We ate all we wanted fresh and gave tons away and didn't care if we put up much for the non-gardening season or not. In recent years, though, I've developed a deeper appreciation for the truly superior flavor of anything/everything that's grown locally and picked/prepared/preserved at its peak of perfection. Thus, I give away little and try to raise as much of our annual food supply as possible. In a good year I fill up three freezers, a root cellar and manage to can 2 or 3 or 4 hundred jars of 'stuff'. Since that is what is important to me now, I want plants that produce well, that provide tasty food we like and that are not prima donnas requiring a lot of pampering. Thus, I'm less inclined to experiment and more inclined to plant what produces really well with little fuss. In a lot of ways, the 'experimentation years' were a lot more fun, but the farm-garden-preserving years have been much more productive. Now my family is spoiled and I must produce as much home-grown food as possible because they don't like grocery store stuff as much as they used to. Even DS's firestation co-workers prefer fresh, home-grown and I'm going to try to plant a lot more for them next year so I can send them all the tomatoes, peppers and other yuummy things they're craving. There just isn't room, or enough improved soil, to experiment with varieties now as there used to be. I don't mind that, really, because as long as what I'm growing is producing well, I've gotten over thinking there are incredible varieties out there just waiting for me to find them. Megan, Black Plum grew very well for me for a long time and then for 2 or 3 years it didn't and I dropped it. It is odd how that happens....and I loved Coyote too. If my garden were twice as large as it is, I'd bring it back to the grow list. So many varieties, so little time (and improved soil). The tomatoes I grow from seed invariably outperform storebought ones and I don't know why, but I've seen it enough years to know it is true. Dawn

I grew PP in 2009. It was a healthy plant and set quite a number of fruit. Needless to say, we were looking forward to them. Then -- bam! -- late blight came to town and we had to destroy every single tomato plant, including the luscious-looking (up to that point) PP. Obviously I can't comment on the taste because none of the fruits were close to mature. But it did have a good number of medium-to-large fruits and quite a few blossoms before it went to the great garden in the sky. :-) I keep meaning to try it again, but always get sidetracked by other varieties and PP gets forgotten. Hmmmm, it's not too late this year. Thanks for the reminder!

The Landis Valley is the true Red Brandywine. ***** As listed at TGS yes, and it's not a strain as Linda has it, for there are no strains of RB. (The large PL and RL "Red Brandywines" are nice large tomatoes but certainly not in the Sudduth Brandywine class regarding taste.) Again, those two that are listed together as Red Brandywine are not Red Brandywine. Both have followers b'c they are good tomatoes and that's why TGS continues to list them but I do wish Linda would take the Red Brandywine name off them and I've suggested to her that she do that.The PL one was widely distributed by Seeds of Design and so there's lots of PL RB out there and it isn't RB. Red Brandywine, the true one, is a fine variety. A few places that carry the correct one are Heirloom Seeds in PA where Tom Hauch was the first to get RB out of the SSE Yearbook and offer it commercially, and the one listed at Sandhill Preservation is also correct. There are other sources that have the correct one as well, I'm sure,but those two sources I can vouch for. Carolyn