I've tried a few heirloom sweet corns. The only variety I can remember by name that I rejected (for flavor) was Country Gentleman. (It seemed pretty much like the pure "glue" taste to me at the time.) The two I might grow again are Golden Bantam and Ashworth. Ashworth made a wimpy plant, but it might have had slightly sweeter corn than Golden Bantam and it was extra early. I've gotten to where I prefer hominy from the local heirloom dent corn I grow, and I don't care as much for sweet corn any more, but after all these years I really ought to try some of the field corn I grow in the milk stage.

You Are a Blueberry Flavored Popsicle You are a very unusual person. For you, summer is all about adventure and travel. You are brilliant and bright. Your mind is always sharp and working at full capacity. You seek out new and different experiences. You get bored very easily. You are very creative. Of all of the types, you're the most likely to invent a new popsicle. What Flavor Popsicle Are You? Brilliant, bright, creative... but, of course! That's ME! LOL. Also shy, humble, reserved... Seriously, for me, summer is all about napping or sitting in a dark, cool bar with a pitcher of icy cold Lemon Ice Martinis. Forget the travel and adventure! Kate

Hi Bill, It is so nice to hear from you today. I hope y'all got some rain this week. We did! I agree with you that over-loving one's tomato plants is counter-productive because it gives you lots of watery, underflavored tomatoes. A term commonly used to refer to overwatering and overfeeding is "loving your plants to death". I am really careful about not overwatering (which, considering our droughts here, is not that hard as long as I don't turn on the soaker hoses too often) and not overfeeding. I've also noticed that plants that are overfed and overwatered have incredible pest problems and more disease issues as well. Bill, my absolute worst tomato year ever in my whole life was here in southern OK in 2004. I remember that I got the plants into mostly raised beds (two rows were at grade level in only slightly amended soil) with well-amended soil and I got them planted pretty early. By the end of May I had nice, tall sturdy plants covered with ripening fruit. In June, 12" of rain fell. Twelve inches. That was the end of what had seemed to be a promising tomato year. All the tomatoes had poor flavor and texture and most were spitters. I hope we never have 12" of rain in one month again during tomato growing season. The rain finally stopped falling sometime in July, but I didn't have tomatoes with good flavor until late August or early September. The next two years were drought years also plagued by wildfire, and in 2005 and 2006 we had really, really good-flavored tomatoes and a pretty decent harvest considering the drought and heat. For us, as for most of OK, 2007's spring and early summer was excessively wet and the tomatoes were late and poorly-flavored. Once again the rain stopped in July, and we got decently flavored tomatoes a month or so later. Last year's drought gave us tomatoes with great flavor, even after I completely stopped watering the garden when the water bills became unbearably high. So, I don't really want to "hope for drought", but it does give us our best-flavored tomatoes (and our hottest peppers too). Even though we had over an inch of rain this week here (1.7" to be exact), that only brings 2009's rainfall up to about 50% of normal, and the drought is forecast to persist or improve only slightly, so I am expecting a good tomato year here. This year I am going to grow about 30 plants in containers so I can control the moisure a little more for them than I can for in-the-ground plantings. I can't wait to see how you like SunGold. The only people I've ever known who didn't like SunGold were, perhaps, picking them too early or maybe overwatering them. You have to let them get a deep golden-orange. Sadly, the SunGolds split pretty easily and don't hold for a long time after being harvested which is why you don't see them for sale often in grocery stores or farmer's markets. If you like SunGold, though, and want to grow it to sell, there is a very similar improved variety called SunSugar that doesn't crack and holds for a longer period of time. The flavor of SunSugar (at least to my tastebuds) is identical to the flavor of SunGold. I get the best tomatoes when I give them only organic tomato food that is low in the necessary macronutrients. I like Espoma Tomato Tone which is a 4-7-10. (For anyone newer to gardening, that's 4% nitogen, 7% phosphate, and 10% potash.) What I really like about it is that it contains all the micronutrients tomatoes need: calcium, magnesium, sulfur, boron, chlorine, cobalt, copper, iron, manganese, molybdenum, sodium, and zinc. I give each plant a handful of Tomato Tone at planting time and then I don't necessarily feed them again unless they are showing signs of nutritional deficiency. I don't water any more often than I have to in order to get the plants to a decent size by the time flowering begins, and I water as little as possible once they are setting fruit, especially as fruit begins to ripen. I like to describe the effect of stress on tomato plants to new gardeners this way: The purpose of a tomato plant is to produce seeds to perpetuate itself. If the plant is living a cushy life and is not in danger of dying, it doesn't get in a big hurry to make seeds and, if it is an indeterminate tomato, it just keeps getting bigger and bigger. Why shouldn't it? The plant, after all, is living the good life and has reason to think that life will end any time soon. On the other hand, if a tomato plant is a little dry, a little hot, and a little thirsty and hungry, it tends to produce more seed, and earlier, because it is hurrying up to make seed to replace itself in case it dies. So, stress (up to a point) is good since it gives us more seeds (inside our fruit). For most of us here in Oklahoma, it isn't too hard to see to it that our plants get the stress they need--Mother Nature sort of takes care of that for us! LOL Dawn

salgal- I have to agree with you about Lapp Valley Farm in Pa. When we live in CT we went to Lancaster County twice a year to visit the Amish. We found that farm when we were riding around. The ice cream could not be beat. The older Amish man told us he could wrap the ice cream for us so we could bring it back to CT & it would not thaw & he was right. Hubby has a sweet tooth so we always came back with at least 8-10 gallons.