Gary, Oh, I don't "think" you said enough to get yourself in trouble. I am sure the GW admin can distinguish between an innocent mention of one's livelihood versus blatant advertising. I am not sure how strongly the rule is enforced, but the rule as I understand it is that no commercial advertising is allowed in any of the forums. If you say something about your business that they think comes too close to advertising, I think they send you a "warning" by e-mail. Anyway, I'm glad you mentioned your operation. How else would someone like me down here in southern OK know you were up there in northern OK? I'm glad to know we have someone else up there (in addition to Lisa) growing heirlooms that we can refer people to when they're searching for plants or for information, answers to the hardest tomato questions, etc..... Maybe you cannot refer people here to your operation, but the rest of us can. There's a guy in Texas who sells heirloom tomatoes by mail but ONLY mails them within the state of Texas. (He has a real job and trying to mail them all over the country is too time-consuming for a part-timer.) I've always wished 'somebody' here in Oklahoma had that kind of business because lots of folks here want to try heirlooms and some people don't have the space to start seeds indoors or their job takes them out of town too much, etc. Finally, what would any of us do if a late freeze (or baseball-sized hail or a tornado or a wildfire) wiped out every plant we had in the ground in, let's say, early May? Would we be forced to grow only hybrids? Well, it wouldn't be the worst thing on earth, but it would be close. No. We'd send out an SOS and find someone in the state of Oklahoma who raises/sells heirlooms and we'd be hoping and praying we could find someone like that. So, you see, we NEEDED to know that you are there. Laspasturas, Welcome home to Oklahoma and also welcome to the Oklahoma forum. I'm glad you decided to stop lurking and start 'talking' to us. I read over your list and think most everything you have on it ought to grow just fine here. If there's one that might not produce well here, it likely would be German Red Strawberry since the heart types don't generally produce well in our endless and brutal summer heat. I grow indeterminates in containers and, in general, they perform quite well there. The larger the container, the better they perform. I grow indeterminates in containers of all sizes from cat litter buckets that seem slightly smaller than 5-gallon buckets (I've never measured to see how much the buckets hold but guess 4 to 5 gallons) to molasses feed tubs (about the size of a half-whiskey barrel, so I'm guessing 20 gallons or so?). To grow in containers here in OK, you have to pay careful attention to watering. In our hottest weather, and by that I'd say anything up to about 105 degrees, the containers may need to be watered twice a day. When the temp goes over 105, I drape old bedsheets over my containerize plants to shade them and then water them at meal times: breakfast, lunch and dinner. Luckily, that kind of heat usually only lasts a few days. Because Oklahoma's heat is so brutal, I try to strategically place my containers where the plants will receive 6 to 8 hours of direct sun and no more than that. I get better production from those plants than from containers placed to that they get sun for 8 to 10 to 12 hours a day. The plants also are happier if they are not lined up alongside a driveway, patio or south or west-facing wall that reflects a lot of heat up onto them. And, light-colored containers reflect heat away from the roots better than dark-colored containers do. AND, I spray-paint my kitty litter buckets a nice shade of green or blue (using Krylon Fusion paint designed specifically for plastics) so I don't look too much like a redneck gardener (not that there's anything wrong with being a redneck gardener). I don't think that your questions about how many tomatoes to grow for canning or dehydrating is a hijacking of the thread at all, but I am worried that people with a similar question in the future wouldn't find this thread if they do a GW search because the search feature here is a little squirrelly (with no dispect to our friends the squirrels). So, if it is OK with you, I'll start a separate thread about growing tomatoes for canning and drying and such in the hope that by putting the words canning and drying in the title, it will ensure future searches find that thread. I'll get busy on that thread after dinner. Dawn

I did post before but it changed. Some I started didn't make it after attempting to harden off in a freak storm. And I kept finding others I *HAD* to have. Others I'll plant if I find them are Gold Medal & Dr Wyches orange. The new list: Arkansas Traveler Aunt Ruby's German Green. Black Cherry Black from Tula Black Krim Black Zebra Burgandy Traveler Carbon Charlie Chaplin Cherokee Green Cherokee Purple Heart Chocolate Stripes Eva Purple Ball Frank's Large Red Grandma Viney's Y & P Green Doctors Green Doctors Frosted Green Zebra Hazel Mae Hillbilly Indigo Rose JD's Special C-Tex KBX Kentucky Striped Kosovo Marianna's Peace Matt's Wild Cherry Medovaya Kaplya (Honey Drop) Momotano New Big Dwarf Pineapple Prue Snow White Striped Cavern "Suprise" (an unknown dwarf from Craig LeHoullier) Sun Gold Sweet 100 Virginia Sweets Wes I was given plants in bulk by someone that's the main tomato guy locally so with certain varieties I have easily 10-15 plants. I'm at around 200 plants. I think I went a bit overboard this year, lol.

Thanks so much for all of your kind responses! Brandyboy sounds wonderful, and more productive than Brandywine. Does anyone know of a good source for Brandyboy seed? Carolyn, I agree that I should expand my color range. I have heard many good things about Black Krim. Another black, Black from Tula, is listed in Seed Savers Exchange as Âgood yields of 3-4 inch fruits on 3-4 foot plants and Ârich full flavor. I like the idea of having a few smaller plants, since I will be growing two massive cherry plants. I am wondering if Black Krim is a similarly smaller plant. Can anyone please share your experiences with Black Krim, Black from Tula, etc.? A few of the many other varieties that I am interested in are: Mortgage Lifter, Matina, Box Car Willie, Arkansas Traveler, and Neves Azorean Red. Wish I had more space!...maybe some day. How are the above varieties with regard to taste and production? (I would prefer all indeterminates, again with full flavor and heavy yields.) At this point, is my best bet to look for seeds/starts at a local nursery (versus big box store), rather than ordering from a seed catalog? Lee, I live in the Jamestown area, Southwest Greensboro / North High Point. Does anyone in the Greensboro area know of a nursery with good selection and harder-to-find tomato varieties? And yes Nandina, the FarmerÂs Marked it outstanding, and huge! I am fortunate to live only about six miles away, and visit often. Last summer, I recall lots and lots of tomato plants, but not much variety (but this was after spring). I did pick up a Patio Totem at the FarmerÂs Market. I will keep my eye out for starts. Anyone else that lives in the Piedmont Triad that has not been to the FarmerÂs Market, must go! I will miss it dearly if I ever move. Also wanted to mention that I do have a stack of seed catalogs ~ Totally Tomatoes, Tomato Growers, Seed Savers, Sandhill, Territorial, Pinetree, etc, etc. But my concern is delivery time. Last year I waited weeks for my Pinetree order, which I placed in September when I figured it wouldnÂt be so busy Sorry for SO MANY questions, I love to learn about tomatoes! I just hate being limited to six! Thanks again in advance for your help! :-)

It was quite by accident that I came about the Ruumi Baanjan seeds, but I ranked it #3 out of all my tomatoes for taste last year, and my wife ranked it #1. If there is a downside to this variety, it is that there is not enough meat in it to make a good processing tomato, even though it is so thin skinned that a few turns in the blender are all that is needed to have the skins evaporate. Good juice tomato, poor sauce, great fresh eating. About 1/3 of the tomatoes were yellow-orange in a kind of sunburst, while the rest were straight yellow. And since all three plants gave that trait I am wondering if it has something to do with sun or heat. I will grow those seeds (which I separated by tomato color) in different areas of the yard to see how they do.