Papa Jim, I am also growing the oxheart Kosovo this season and I am very happy with the flavor and production. I like a strain of Brandywine from Monticello but sometimes is a good producer and sometimes is not, I planted this season yellow Brandywine and have not seen any ripe yet and only have few fruit in the vine. Big Beef is always a reliable producer and when it ripens on the vine has a good flavor. When I visited Tom's garden the Beefmaster where producing really well compared to the others, he was also growing Indigo Rose and he said he liked the flavor, the vines are strong and produce well. I just love the taste of fresh beans and my dogs too, we are eating them daily, like you said they only take minutes to prepare and they are delicious! We are working on the bananas this week, taking the bunches down and preserving for later, they really have a knockout flavor, nothing like the store bought, the only but is that they are a lot of work. Silvia

Your zone is very different from ours so I don't know how to answer that question. I won't use a bloom booster except as I described above to get blooms during a rare summer cold front. The reason is that our weather is so hot in the summer that the plants stop setting fruit. In fact, at our house this week, in just a couple of days, we move into that danger zone of temperatures in the mid-90s. Hopefully we won't stay there. I'd hate to think the tomato plants have already set all the fruit they are going to set this spring/summer. If your tomato plants are blooming and your daytime highs are staying below around 92-95 and your nighttime lows are staying below 70-72, you shouldn't need a bloom booster. Your plants should bloom naturally and should set fruit. I haven't used a bloom booster in years because even though our summers routinely are very hot, I usually don't need a bloom booster unless we are in prolonged drought, and we haven't had prolonged summer drought at our house since 2015, which is extremely rare. If your tomato plants are blooming and not setting fruit, perhaps your nights still are too cold (below 55 degrees). Or, if you are having normal weather and fruit should be setting in the temperatures you have but it is not, then perhaps there is a lack of wind to shake up the flowers. Tomatoes have perfect blossoms and the flowers need some movement in order for the pollen to fall from the anthers inside the flower to the stigma, also inside the flower, to achieve pollination and fertilization. If your air is very still or if wind movement is blocked by something like a building, your plants may need some help moving. There are various ways to do this. The traditional one is to thump the flower blossoms. If you have a lot of plants and they are caged, you can just walk along a row of cages giving each cage a gentle shake as you pass by. Or, if you have a tennis racket....walk along the row of plants with your tennis racket in your hand. Give each tomato cage a good whack as you walk by. That will cause the plants and their flowers to move and the pollen to move around inside the flowers. You can use a bloom booster whenever you want, but don't overdo it. Too much can cause too much fruit set and then the plant has more fruit than it can carry to maturity.

Nowyousedum, that is a nice tomato, I can feel your excitement. I would like to share a happy story with you now. My wife is 75 years old and has never started a tomato seed until this year. I had told her that I would just buy plants this year because of the hassle of seed starting. Without me knowing it, she ordered some seed and placed them in our kitchen window. I noticed some plants were coming up and getting way too tall, and I ask her what they were. She told me that she wanted to grow some big ones like Mama use to grow. I told her she was going to loose them if she did not do something with them. She ask me if I would care for them for her, which I did. Her plants were smaller that the ones I bought but I potted them up and put them under the lights. I wanted to take very good care of them because she has never had much luck with starting any kind of seeds. The tomato plants grew very well, and around the second week of may I planted her, her very own row of tomatoes in a different garden than where I have my tomatoes planted. My wife has ask about her plants several times, and even gone out to check them herself ( not often enough). Today I brought in some of her tomatoes and told her that she had missed a few. I think that now she can say that she has grown some "Big ones like Mama grew". I want you to see what a mess that old woman has created with her tomato seeds. I bet I know someone that is going to order seeds again next year. Larry

Congrats! That's one B E U T ful tomato! PS Given the name, is it green on the inside?