Here's my list as it currently stands. The first three rounds are growing. Round 4, which is fall tomatoes, is usually put into the ground in late June or early July from a late May or early June sowing. Because last year's drought continues to plague us, I cut way, way, way back. I was trying to limit Rounds 1 thru 3 to a total of 40 varieties, but I didn't succeed. : ) ROUND 1: These are my "must haves" for this year. They were started in February for planting out the last week of March or the first week of April. Might start putting them in the ground this weekend, depending on the forecast. These 4 are from purchased plants I found at a local store in Feb. and planted in containers. One of them has 3 fruit that should ripen sometime in April, another is in bloom, and the other two are just sitting there. 1. Better Bush 2. Bush Early Girl 3. Bush Goliath 4. Grape These I started from seed: 5. Arkansas Traveler 6. Black Cherry 7. Box Car Willie 8. Brandy Boy 9. Chocolate Stripes 10. Homestead 24 11. Indian Stripe 12. Jet Star 13. Momotaro 14. Mountain Princess 15. Neve's Azorean Red 16. New Big Dwarf 17. Orange-Flesh Purple Smudge 18. Porterhouse 19. Primetime 20. Ramapo 21. Royal Hillbilly 22. San Marzano 23. San Marzano Redorta 24. Sioux 25. Sun Gold 26. Super Sioux 27. Supersonic 28. Tess's Land Race Currant 29. True Black Brandywine ROUND 2 (These were started from seed about a month after Round 1 and they'll be ready to go into the ground about mid-April.) 30. Bloody Butcher 31. Glacier 32. Ildi 33. Livingston's Gold Ball 34. Moreton 35. Mountain Fresh Plus 36. Mountain Glory 37. Orange Pixie 38. Red Defender 39. Red Robin 40. Rose Quartz 41. Scarlet Red 42. Snow White 43. Sophie's Choice 44. Sweet Million 45. Tropic 46. Yellow Canary ROUND THREE: Started mid-March. Will go into ground in early May. 47. Cuban Yellow Grape 48. Dixie Golden Queen 49. Fargo 50. Golden Sweet 51. Opalka 52. Polish Linguisa 53. Porter 54. Sun Cherry ROUND 4: Since I won't be starting seed until May, this list isn't firm yet, and I'll probably add a few others. These, though, are the ones currently scheduled for Round 4. Because the Livingston tomatoes do so well in our hot climate, I like to grow them as fall tomatoes. They are very tough--there is not a wimp in the bunch, although I do grow Honor Bright (Lutescent) as a novelty more than anything (although its tomatoes taste OK when fully ripened). In the case of the Livingstons, I put their date of introduction after the variety, because some of them are so very old, and I find that quite fascinating. 55. Keepsake 56. Long-Season Peach 57. Longkeeper 58. Winterkeeper 59. Solar Set R 60. Solar Fire 61. Sun King 62. Sun Master 63. Sunray 64. Turkey Chomp 65. Mule Team 66. Livingston's Dwarf Stone (1902) 67. Livingston's Favorite (1883) 68. Livingston's Gold Ball (1892) 69. Livingston's Golden Queen (1882) 70. Livingston's Globe (1905) 71. Livingston's Honor Bright (1987) (Lutescent) 72. Livingston's Ideal (1930) 73. Livingston's Magnus (1900) 74. Livingston's Main Crop Pink (1941) 75. Livingston's Perfection (1880) 76. Livingston's Paragon (1870) 77. Livingston's Stone (1889) 78. Rio Grande And, there's some I didn't start from seed but which might prove irresistable if I see them at a store. I'd probably buy one of each of these and bring it home to plant: Black Krim (replaced by True Black Brandywine), Cherokee Purple (replaced by Indian Stripe this year), and Bradley Pink (couldn't find my seed). I am growing tons of cherry, grape and currant types to dehydrate for winter. On any given day during the harvest season, if you walk into my house, you're likely to smell the delicious aroma of dehydrating tomatoes coming from the kitchen. We don't grow any oxhearts here because they produce very, very few fruit per plant in our hot climate. And, in case anyone is wondering, we grow all these tomatoes for us and, no, we don't sell any, although we often give them away to family and friends. I always raise more plants that I have room for, so a lot of the extras go to friends and neighbors, and many will be going to the April plant swap as well. Dawn

Scott, I still have tomatoes producing heavily, and a few slow-pokes (planted late because of weather) that haven't produced a ripe one yet. And, there's no way I am going to list every single variety because I plant too many, but I'll give a brief synopsis of the ones that have produced well. Better Bush--earliest tomatoes...picked ripe ones in late April from plants set out in containers in mid-February. The flavor was very good considering these ripened in cool weather. The one in the ground in the garden produced one of the earliest ripe fruit in the garden too. Early Girl--early, lots of fruit, average flavor Jet Star--earlier than Early Girl, heavy bearers, better than average flavor Supersonic--very heavy yields of very large tomatoes, great flavor Prime Time--very heavy yields of large tomatoes, great flavor Ramapo--heavy yields of medium to large tomatoes, great flavor Moreton--heavy yields of medium to large tomatoes, very good flavor Momotaro--heavy yields of large pink tomatoes, excellent flavor Livingston Gold Ball--Heavy yields of golf-ball sized golden-yellow fruit with great taste. I like these so much they seldom make it indoors because I eat them while working in the garden. Indian Stripe--moderate yields (not as good this year as last year) of tomatoes similar to Cherokee Purple in flavor (excellent flavor) and appearance Chocolate Stripes--moderately heavy yield of red and green stiped tomatoes with average flavor Brandywine--low yields--so far 2 tomatoes from one plant and 5 from the other, but the flavor is great, and they are blooming now so hoping for more fruit set during the cool spell (which hasn't arrive here yet--it was 84 degrees here at 7:30 a.m. and felt like 89) Nebraska Wedding--Moderate yields of orange beefsteaks with outstanding texture and flavor Royal Hillbilly-moderate yield of fruit with amazing flavor--did not produce huge numbers like last year Tess' Land Race Currant--One of these is all you need. The plant currently is 8' tall and about 4' wide and I've had trouble keeping it upright. It currently is staked with 3 8' tall metal fence posts and 3 shorter wooden stakes. This produces tiny, red, round, tasty 1/2" wide tomatoes in great profusion....I'd say I've easily picked a thousand of these so far and it will produce until frost is heavy. A lot of flavor in a tiny tomato. We use these in salads and also I dehydrate tons of them. Sweet Million--heavy producer of red cherries with very good flavor Rose Quart--heavy producer of pink oval cherry types (not really as oval as most grape tomatoes) with very good flavor SunGold--as always, a heavy producer of golden-orange cherries with great flavor. Less cracking than most years. Black Cherry--superb as always and ties with SunGold in terms of great flavor and great productivity Ildi--a very prolific yellow grape tomato with amazing flavor. I've tried other yellow grapes and none of them can touch it in flavor. Some of the others are late to ripen.... Red Defender and Scarlet Red both have very heavy loads of large tomatoes. I am just about to start picking them. I think I picked a couple of Scarlet Red last week, but sent them to work at the fire station with DS, so can't comment on the flavor yet. These plants (and Moreton) have just about more fruit than foliage, and their foliage is heavy. I've never had plants in 7 to 10 gallon containers produce as many tomatoes per plant as these are producing. I can't wait to see how they do in the ground next year. Arkansas Traveler is producing medium-sized pink tomatoes with great flavor as always. Box Car Willie is just now ripening fruit. San Marzano Redorta is slow to ripen this year. Viva Italia has been a heavier producer and earlier and with fine flavor Black Plum was wonderful but both plants---one in a container and one in the ground--died of bacterial wilt. Mountain Princess produced heavy loads of pink, tasty fruit early on but was the first to die....of bacterial wilt. It was in a container too, and in fresh soil. (sigh) Some plants that won't be back: Dr. Carolyn (ivory cherry), Snow White (ivory to yellow large cherry) and Yellow Pear (kids love them). All three struggled with disease and died about the time they're producing heavily. That's all I can think of off the top of my head. I didn't grow a lot of my real favorites this year because I was worried about drought and wanted some heavy-producing hybrids. Next year (Jay, do you think I'll stick to this plan?) I am determined to grow only the best-of-the-best of the plants I've tried, and maybe allow myself to try 5 or 10 new varieties. I think I'll do a 50-50 split between heirlooms (better flavor, but usually lower productivity in our climate) and hybrids (flavor can be iffy, but heavy production). Dawn

Jay, It puzzled me too and still does. Your freeze damage occurred in a manner that contradicts almost everything we've been told about freeze damage....like the fact that yours occurred on higher ground and not lower ground. Mine is always the opposite. The year the bed of black tomatoes survived freeze damage that severely injured or killed everything else, they were in the highest bed at the top of my sloping garden. I had thought that maybe you had some wind and it kept the damage from settling in uniformly, so your damage seems even more odd in the absence of wind. I also have had times where I thought the foliage from nearby trees protected some plants, but that didn't happen in your garden either. I guess it is one more oddball thing to add to the whole oddball year. Ilene, I've been thinking about those of you in northeastern OK and wondering what the 2009-2010 El Nino with all its excess rainfall will do to y'all and to your plants this coming spring. It seems like y'all have enough issues with excess moisture most years, and now to have the looming specter of El Nino on top of that.... The only issue with starting seed in the ground is that your whole crop will be very late, and you might not get any ripe fruit until fall. It's that whole pollination thing where the plants need to pollinate while temps are in the right range, and it is doubtful that direct-sown plants would be large enough to bloom while temps are in the right range. Still, you never know....if you have recurring cold fronts next year like we had this year, you might very well get fruit set all summer during the recurring cold spells. I love your description of the friends that remind you of the Baldwin Sisters! I always thought they were so funny. I didn't save any seed from anything because I am always so overwhelmed with trying to keep up with the harvest (more about the latest harvest in a minute) at the same time I ought to be saving seeds, but I can still save some from Tess's later this week because it still has several hundred tomatoes on it. In fact, if it ever stops raining, I need to pick those tomatoes today and dehydrate a bunch of them. First, I'll look at my seed envelope, because I'm thinking it was packed with oodles of seed, so I might not have to save any since there might be plenty from the original seed packet to share. Here's where Tess's Land Race Currant gets interesting: are you ready for a simple lesson in tomato biology? Tess's Land Race Currant, like all currant tomatoes, is not Lycopersicon lycopersicum like most tomatoes. Instead, it is Lycopersicon pimpinellifolium. It has extruded styles on its flowers, so it is very, very prone to cross pollinate. Because of the extruded styles, all currant tomatoes cross very easily with other currant tomatoes--that is one thing I know for sure. What I am not sure about is how readily they cross with tomatoes that are Lycopersicon lycopersicum. Most modern hybrid tomatoes have retracted styles, so likely wouldn't cross with Tess', but some heirloom tomatoes, especially those that have potato-leaved foliage, also have extruded styles so they might cross. And, even with beefsteak types of Lycopersicon lycopersicum, any fruit formed from double blossoms (also referred to by some as megablooms) may be crossed. So, saved unbagged seed of Tess's might or might not give you Tess's---which is why I'm hoping my seed packet of Tess's has a lot of seeds in it that are more likely to be pure. Another interesting thing about Tess's is that it mostly produces red fruit, but is not stable (perhaps because it crosses so easily?) and sometimes you get gold or pink or a sort of rosy-gold fruit. On this year's plants, I've had all red ones though. Either way....whether from the packet or from some seed I can save and ferment this week, I'll send you some Tess's seed this winter when we start exchanging seeds. I have tried to grow Tess's in ever enlarging (diameter-wise) cages and in ever-taller cages. Because it simply won't stop growing, and I hate to prune/top a healthy plant, I am thinking that an arched panel may be the best solution for it. I guess we'll know by this time next year if I'm right. Isn't Jay's plants' damage the oddest thing? I guess we should be grateful, though, that it was hit and miss because at least he didn't lose them all. When green tomato time arrives, I have a recipe for a green tomato cake that tastes like a spice cake, and for fried green tomato parmigiana. We're not mincemeat eaters either, so I don't make tomato mincemeat and I don't care for pickled tomatoes either. Earlier, I said I don't even try to save seed because I always get so overwhelmed by the harvest, which is exactly the case here this summer. The harvest was late but abundant and I have about 150 jars of food put up in the cellar, and an equal amount in the freezers. Looking at it all, I am kind of amazed to think it all came from our garden. Except for a steady flow of smallish numbers of tomatoes...with no more than a dozen or two large ones on any given day....and recurring rounds of peppers, the harvest has really slowed down......until yesterday. I went out to the garden to pick ears from the earlier of the two fall sweet corns, and this is what I ended up bringing inside just before dinner time: Hundreds of Tepin peppers to dry Dozens each of jalapenos and habaneros A good-sized mess of black-eyed peas (the last ones, because I then pulled the vines), A good sized mess of Royalty purple pod beans and a similar amount of Contender bush green beans A modest amount of okra About a dozen tomatoes (large ones only, still need to pick bite-sized ones from the six remaining bite-sized tom plants) and still need to pick big ones today from the containers in the back yard A few dozen ears of corn About a dozen pickling cukes So, today I'll be in the kitchen processing all of these one way or another, although I'm about out of ideas for hot peppers, having already canned pepper rings and pepper strips, frozen plain green jalapenos and roasted red and green chipotles, dehydrated jalapenos and habaneros down into either dried, ground power seasoning or chopped dehydrated pepper flakes, and dehydrated tepins. I've also made several batches of Jalapeno Jelly, Jalapeno Gold Jelly, and Habanero Gold Confetti Jelly. I am really getting sick of peppers. I guess I could make more salsa--I think we have plenty, but DS thinks we need much more. I could make pepper ristras, but in this humidity, they'd likely dry on the outside and mold inside. So, I guess I'll just make more of the same stuff I've already made....and I haven't made any vinegar/pepper sauce yet, so that's a possibility. The second fall corn should be ready to harvest in 10-14 days so I guess we'll know in a couple of weeks if it has beaten the frost and matured, or if the frost gets it first. I'm hoping for another frost-free month so I can harvest a lot more beans and cukes, but the rain/clouds aren't helping because they stall without sunlight and some heat. In a way, it is nice to have bowls and bags of produce stacked everywhere to process again, because the harvest really has dwindled down. Harvesting the last of the purplehull pinkeye peas was bittersweet--I hate to see the harvest end, but they produced copious amounts of peas from July through October, so that's a pretty good run, and we ate them almost daily 'in season' and still have plenty put up in the freezer for winter. I really need more cukes in order to make a batch of pickles, but the others aren't enlarging very much in the absence of sunlight. I guess I could make a half-batch of something. So far, the only pickled cukes I've done have been whole Dill pickles, bread and butter slices, and sweet pickle relish, so I am hoping to get enough cukes to make dill spears, dill relish, kosher dills and bread-and-butter stackers before the cucumber harvest ends. I tried to help myself in terms of NOT having an overwhelming harvest to process by saving pickling cukes and bush green beans for fall, and it helped a lot. I don't think I could have handled the harvest I had in July-August if I'd had to deal with cukes and bush beans at the same time. Still, because the tomatoes produced great, if late, and the peppers were overachievers (and still are, which makes it tempting to just pull the plants now and put an end to my pepper misery) month after month, I still had weeks where every flat surface in the house had piles of produce waiting to be processed, or in some stage of being processed. I wish there were a way to spread out the harvest more evenly but you really can't.....the veggies produce when they produce and that's just how it is. In a year like this, I really think I could produce almost an entire year's supply of veggies here....but, then, most years are not like this...most have half the rainfall we've had so far this year, so I should be grateful for the non-drought years because they are fairly rare. Still, I'm at the point where I never want to look at another pepper again....and my jalapeno plants are still heavily loaded. The rain, by the way, continues to fall, and we've had thunder and lightning since the early morning hours, but nothing violent. Dawn

I can almost guarantee that every single member who posts here will have a different answer! Some of us grow specialty tomatoes like me, only big, few-seeded varieties that are very meaty and have a real old-fashioned tomato zing. Some here grow for market, some grow for heirloom, some grow to produce seeds to sell, anyway, you get the picture. I will be interested in seeing what get's posted. I don't think even if I was tied up and tortured, that I could pick only one variety. At least from my perspective, there are individual tomatoes I like for different reasons so I just grow them all! I will bow to other members here because I don't grow tomatoes for eating fresh and that is your criteria?