Answers to questions: 1) I haven't been fertilizing regularly, whatever that means. I top-dressed the soil with the contents of my compost tumbler about a month after planting. Last week I added organic veggie food (granules) hoping to see improvement. 2) Watering tomatoes...I was always told that tomatoes do not like a lot of water. I typically water my garden every 2-3 days in the evening with a shower nozzle at the base of every plant. Not a lot, just enough to soak the ground in the entire raised bed frame. 3) I have cukes at the front of the trellis and yellow squash and zuchinni at the back. In retrospect the squash should not be there due to space issues, lesson learned. However all of my zuchinni flowers have died and I don't know why. 4) I noticed that powdery mildew as well. What is it? Causes? Can I get rid of it? This is the my first stab at gardening in our new house so I don't have anything else to compare to except our previous home where every crop pretty much flourished. My tomato plants are very wimpy looking in terms of the number of branches and fruit compared to my previous garden. I picked a few ripening cherry tomatoes yesterday. They are about half the size of a normal cherry tomato. I joked to my kids and told them that they are blueberry tomatoes.

I thought we were sure to have frost on Wednesday evening so I picked off the rest of the tomatoes, cucumbers and zucchini. Frost never came so the last planting of corn that is just a few days away from being ready may still have a chance (plus I covered it with Remay cloth and clothespins). The first two plantings of corn was soooooo good this year. Suddenly there are lots of zucchini, earlier they weren't pollinating but now every one is growing into a monster even though I've stopped watering and it hasn't rained here for weeks, either. SunGold tomato plants are still loaded with many green tomatoes - I hope more have a chance to ripen. Out of 4 plants, I've picked at least 8 gallons of ripe ones so far. That is one heavy producing tomato. I tried a late August sowing of spinach and lettuce - like NAF said, probably too hot and in my case, too dry, because I got very little germinating and those that did have stalled in growth. Last year I started lettuce seedlings under lights in early August to plant out in late August and I had a very good fall crop of lettuce. On the flower side of things, it seemed perennials bloomed out very quickly this year. There are still some Indian Summer Rudbeckia hanging on in the back yard, and Ring of Fire sunflowers in the side yard that are providing colour.The Autumn Joy are now colouring up but I desperately need to get out there this weekend and do some cutting back and tidying up. The big pots of petunias are still doing well but the smaller hanging baskets are all rootbound and starting to look a little spent. It would be nice to have fresh pansy transplants to take their place now. Tree leaves are beginning to talke on the autumn colouring so the shrubs won't be far behind.

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

My Mid Season Report: All the following have ripened at least one tomato so far and all grown organically without sprays: OSU Blue...tall plants, average taste, huge production, earlier fruits were more purple than current ones. Very Good disease resistance. Sun Gold (54)...tall plant, great production excellent tasting cherries as usual. Above average disease resistance. Hege German Pink(69)...tall plants, GREAT taste, huge production and early for a full size tomato. Good disease resistance. Gary O Sena(72) tall plants, GREAT taste, huge production and early for a full size tomato. Good disease resistance. German Johnson(76) very tall plant, Very good taste, Great production. Average disease resistance. Spudakee (76) tall plant, good production, average disease resistance. Good taste. BrandyBoy (76) tall plant, above average disease resistance, Very Good taste. Average Production. Cowlicks Brandywine (76) tall plant, above average disease resistance, Very Good taste. Above average production. Sudduth Brandywine (78) tall plant, above average disease resistance. Very Good taste. Average production. Orange Minsk (80) Short but full plants that don't want to grow up the Texas cage. Very Good taste. Above average disease resistance. Great production. Big Cheef (83) tall plant with very good taste and production. Above average disease resistance. Dana's Dusky Rose (84) tall plant with very good taste and average disease resistance. Good production. Porterhouse (86) Average size plant with very good production and good taste. Looks like a couple 2 plus pounders on him! Above average disease resistance. Vorlon (86) Average size plant with good production and very good taste. Below average disease resistance. KBX (89) Huge plant with very good production and very good disease resistance. Very good taste. The following plants haven't ripened a fruit to taste yet: Granny Cantrell German PL...Average size plant with average production and above average disease resistance. Brandywine/NAR F4 cross...Average size plant with below average production this year and below average disease resistance. Goose Creek...tall plant with good production and good disease resistance but WHERE are the ripe ones? Claude Brown's Yellow Giant...Very tall plant with Above average production with some HUGE still green fruit on them! Very good disease resistance. Marianna's Conflict...Average size plant with poor production on a very diseased plant. VERY unlike previous years. Notes: Very hot sunny season has ripened the same varieties 10 to 16 days earlier than last year's cool and cloudy season. Big Zac seeds failed germination. Gave Big Beef a rest this year. Tied for best tasting this year so far are Gary O Sena and Hege German Pink. Both even beating the Brandys! A very good season so far...;-)