my opinion is that maybe the plum tomatoes pickle better than the regular toms because they have less juice inside. Anyway I like to pickle with plum toms. I pick them slightly small and none are really big toms. but if I slice a few in half top to bottom then I can get a few extra into the jars. I also like to use more vinegar in my brines. In fact I have always used all vinegar and no water. that makes for a very sour pickle that I like and it is also more safe because the pH is always low this way. So one thing to remember. You can always use more vinegar and less water. It simply makes for a more sour pickle. I like them this way. if you do use water. the water is important. you really want very soft water. hard water can cause a problem getting the pH low.

In the 'old days', many of the tomato plants have a lot more natural protection againt any blights. Today, with all the hundreds or varieties, its very hard to know which will grow well in a specific area. I recall growing stuffing tomatoes one year. Kind of like a cross between a big bell pepper with an empty cavity inside except for the seed cluster. The stuffing tomatoes looked good at first, but once the started to ripen to red, they got small spots on the skins that destroyed them very fast. If they were picked before the spots appeared and brought indoors, washed and allowed to sit on a counter overnight, the next day they would have many bad spots that quickly consumed them. Never again will I plant a stuffing tomato. My two favorite choices for tomato seeds is Totally Tomatoes and Tomato Growers. Both offer many kinds, and some are highly resistant to blights. Of course the store boughts are like baseballs and can take a lot of banging around, but thats fine if they are intended to be handled a lot and shipped a long distance away.

They look ok to me. Tell the person you plan on gifting them to that they should quarantine them for a week or two before planting them. I do this with any plants that I buy, or that are gifted to me. Oh and the big one that attacks egg plants is not spider mites it is flea beetles. They leave holes in the leaves like no tomorrow. I had an egg plant that had them. I planted it far away from everything else in a guerilla hole. The weather killed it right as it was starting to set some good eggplants. It grew like mad anyhow.

First, it could be Early Blight as well, I just couldn't see the interior of those lesions to make a could Dx but whatever I've said about Septoria goes for EB as well. You can try copper but it's not anywheres as effective as a good as the anti-fungal I mentioned. There are other anti-fungals that are organic in nature but I haven't used them so can't comment. And sulfur is quite a ways down the list in terms of anything that might help. No, the foliage diseases aren't necessarily lethal if you get on top of the situation ASAP. The fungal foliage diseases do progress more rapidly than the bacterial foliage diseases so you still may come out OK if you start doing something ASAP. Carolyn