Pat, We eat all we can while it is fresh. We freeze, we dehydrate, we can. We give away fresh produce (not as much as you'd think, though, because I like canning it) to family and friends. We send lots of produce to work with our son, who is a professional firefighter. Since they work 24 hours shifts, they cook a lot of their meals while working and always appreciate a few fresh veggies (plus, it helps them stretch their food budget). Last year I filled up 3 freezers, the root cellar (aka the tornado shelter), and the "jelly closet" (which originally started out as a coat closet, but is much better used for food storage of home-preserved food). I canned a little over 700 jars, but that's because it was the best fruit year ever and I had 350 lbs. of plums and peaches to process in a fairly short period of time. Most years it is more like 200 or 300 or 400 jars. What does a small family do with all those jars of jams, jellies, salsas and hot peppers? We eat some of it, but give away a lot more than we eat. My DH is a police officer and every year at Christmas he gives gifts of our home-grown and home-preserved goodies to about 80 or 90 co-workers at the PD. We give the same sort of gifts to our friends, including all the members of our vounteer fire dept, and to family members. We donate jars of jellies, jams, salsa and candied jalapenos to local fundraisers for some of our county's volunteer fire departments and oter causes. I think that last year, each gift bag at Christmas had 1 jar each of jelly, jam, peppers and salsa. Of course, the ones for family members had more---maybe 8 jars. I figure if I am going to put all the time into the veggie garden, I want it to be as productive as possible. So, of course, I'm happiest with big harvests. However, in some years you have to be happy with any harvest at all and this is one of those years. We love eating fresh food from our garden and appreciate the fact that we know how it was raised and that it wasn't sprayed with a lot of pesticides. Now that we have become so used to eating from our own garden, it would be hard to go back to eating only grocery store produce because the quality of the fresh grocery store produce just is not the same as that of what we grow. I garden biointensively with very close spacing so I can get the most out of the space I have. I do a lot of succession planting. My favorite way to do succession planting is to start the succession crop indoors 7-12 days before I expect to plant it into the ground. I often start beans and peas in in 3-oz. bathroom cups filled with potting soil. I cut a big "X" in the bottom of each cup for drainage, and for the roots to grow down through later after I transplant them into the ground. I use the paper cups as plantable pots to reduce transplant shock. I germinate the seeds indoors where I can control the temps and light, them immediately move the seedlings outdoors to grow in natural light as soon as they germinate. (This eliminates the need to harden them off.) At the time I'm removing a finished crop like, let's say, the mid-season corn that will be coming out of the bed in a few days, I'll harvest the corn in the morning and replant that bed the same day. In the afternoon I'll likely use my little Mantis cultivator to work the existing mulch into the soil in the early afternoon. In the cool evening hours, I'll transplant the started bean or pea plants, cups and all, into the soil and water it in. Then I'll mulch it. So, if you were at my house early that morning, you might see a raised bed of ready-to-harvest corn. Then, if you came by at 8 o'clock that evening, the corn will have been picked and processed, the bed cleaned out, the corn stalks on the compost pile, and rows of small southern pea or bush bean plants freshly transplanted into the former corn bed. It surprises our friends and neighbors sometimes when they stop by on a day I've harvested/replanted. I'll get a funny look and a question like "weren't your corn plants there this morning...?). Doing a quick turnaround like that speeds up the harvest cycle. For example, in beds from which I harvested onions the first week in June, I'm already harvesting okra from transplants that went into the bed the same day the onions came out. The watermelon plants I put into the ground that day have melons that are the size of softballs, and those plants have been in the ground for only about 5 or 6 weeks. I have a lot of trouble with good seed germination in early spring when soil temps are too cold or soil is too wet or when the cutworms are too active. That's one reason I prefer transplants as much as possible. It is a lot more work and a lot more time-consuming, but you get more consistent germination, and there's not any gaps in a row caused by poor germination since I don't transplant any cups with ungerminated seeds. For something like southern peas that germinate easily in warm soil, it isn't so much that I get better germination in paper cups indoors, but that I get a head start by growing the plants in cups. If I start seeds of southern peas in cups and transplant them into the ground about 10-14 days after I first planted the seeds in the cups, then those plants will produce 1.5 to 2 weeks earlier than plants that would be direct-seeded on the same day. I've grown the crops here so long in that mnner, that it is easy for me to look at the spring plantings and know when it is time to start seed of the follow-on crop. I even start seeds in cups sometimes of veggies that don't like to be transplanted, like carrots. Since a lot of things don't like to be transplanted, I just plant the cups and all right into the ground. The paper cups break down pretty quickly. If every succession crop I put into the ground is already a week or two "old" when I plant it, I get a faster harvest, which allows me to get the next succession crop into the ground quickly too....and so it goes until I run out of space, water, or time. Fall beans are the best! It is nice to be picking them in October when the temperatures are milder. We just called them "October beans" when I was a kid because that's when you picked them. I probably was a teenager before I figured out that "October beans" was a general name for all fall-harvested beans and not a specific variety of bean like "Lazy Housewife" or "McCasland". The older I get the more I like pole beans because it isn't fun bending over to pick bush beans, but I always plant bush beans in spring for the early harvest, and pole beans for fall, and more bush beans for fall in a good rainfall year. I'm not sure if I'll plant fall bush beans or not. In order for me to do that, I want to see some good rain falling first. About the only succession plantings I'm making this summer are additional sowings of lima beans, southern peas (I'm growing pinkeye purplehull, crowder, zipper and cream types), okra and squash. They can take the heat when nothing else can. I'd never, ever, ever sell my veggies at a Farmer's Market. I've been to Farmer's Markets, I've witnessed idiot customers trying to bargain with the grower/seller and convince them to sell their fresh veggies for next to nothing. and it is a pet peeve of mine. It is unreasonable for consumers to expect sellers at the Farmer's Markets to sell their produce for lower prices than they'd pay at Wal-Mart and it just infuriates me. Knowing all the blood, sweat and tears, and time and effort, and worry and sleepless nights on a "frost watch" that go into growing fresh produce, I feel like the growers at Farmer's Markets ought to be able to sell their produce for more, not less, than the price local grocery stores charge. Raising veggies well is labor-intensive and time-consuming and to me it implies a certain lack of respect for the farmer's or market grower's time and effort to try to bargain them down to a "cheap" price. To me, their work and the quality of their produce is deserving of the price they ask, and sometimes I think they sell too cheaply because they feel they have to in order to compete. So, it will be a cold day in Oklahoma in July before you'll see me selling at a Farmer's Market. A friend of a friend of ours sold produce at a local farmer's market for several years and finally gave it up to get "a real job" with a guaranteed income and I can't say I blame her one bit. Our produce is too precious to us to sell it to unappreciative people for whom the only thing that matters is the price they pay. Dawn

Scott, YOU had to water! That's amazing. I would have thought you'd be the last person in Oklahoma this year who'd have to water anything. LOL I love, love, love Brandy Boy. The first year that it hit the market, I was very, very skeptical, but I bought the seed and raised the plants and was very pleased with both the plant's performance and the mater's flavor. I've grown it ever since. EVERYONE who wants to sell a tomato will try to tell you that it "tastes like Brandywine" or "beat Brandywine in a taste test" or whatever. Brandy Boy, though, is one tomato about which I think this claim could be made. In a good year, I am lucky to get 6 ripe tomatoes off of a Sudduth Brandywine (and maybe only 3 or 4 in a bad year), but I will get at least 3 times that many fruit, and often quite a lot more, from each Brandy Boy plant. In the years since Brandy Boy debuted, Burpee brought out quite a few other tomatoes that actually seem to have been bred for flavor instead of grocery store shelf longevity. From this group of maybe a dozen tomatoes, the ones I've tried and decided were "keepers" are "Bucks County", "Little Brandywine" and "Porterhouse". This is my first year to try "Burpee's Big Mama", which is an indeterminate paste type that has long, large tomatoes whose shape kind of reminds me of Jersey Devil. I haven't eaten enough of them yet to decide if the flavor makes them a keeper, though. They are huge monster of plants and are prolific producers. Dawn

2009 Tomato Season Report The season started off with late frosts and leafhoppers delaying the tomato plant out. May was rainy and cold and by the time the plants were in the ground it was the second week of June. The Sweet 100 plant is the only exception as it was planted around May 15th. June was very wet with a record 8" of rain and no days above 80*. July was still wet and cool with only a handful of days over 85*. August was a little drier but still fairly cool. September was much drier and warmer which got a lot of the tomatoes to flower but it was to late for fruiting. October started off dry and cool but then turned wetter with temps dipping down to 31*. Most of the tomatoes got hit with disease and frost damage after the cold spell. The last part of the month was warmer with temps in the 50's and 60's but several inches of rain brought a bad tomato season to an end well almost anyway. The sweet 100 plant still has a couple more tomatoes ripening on the vine. I had no late blight in my garden a little bit of early blight and at the end of the season septoria leaf spot started showing up. Brandy boy: - potato leaf, medium about 5-ft, average disease tolerance. No ripe fruit but it did eventually flower and produce a couple of tiny green fruit. They both Had severe cracking issues. Crack size: all the way in to the middle of the tomato. The cracking was partly do to uneven moisture but this variety was still very crack prone. Brandywine Sudduth's strain: - potato leaf, medium/tall 5-6-ft, had a several disease problems especially later in the season. No flowers or fruit. Overall very disappointing. Cuostralee: - Regular leaf medium/tall 5-6-ft, Not great disease tolerance but it was able to grow out of the disease. No ripe fruit but it did flower. Japanese Black Trifele: - potato leaf, short 3-4-ft, top of the plant broke in a windstorm. good disease tolerance but not great. first ripe fruit october 30th after ripening indoors for two weeks, 1 ripe fruit. Taste: Gel is sweet with a slight tang to it. The meat is very mild and a little bit bland but it has a faint smoky flavor to it. No problems with cracking. I saved seeds. Marianna's peace: - Potato leaf medium/tall 5-6-ft, good disease tolerance until the end of the season when both plants yellowed. No ripe fruit. both plants flowered . Neves Azorean Red: - regular leaf, medium height 4-5-ft. It did get shaded by the brandywine plant next to it. Average disease tolerance but it would probably do better with more sun. No ripe fruit. the plant didn't even flower probably partly do to the weather and partly do to the shade. Sweet 100: - regular leaf, tall 7-8-ft , average disease tolerance first ripe fruit mid August, ~ 45 ripe fruit. Taste: Sweet with good "tomato" flavor. size small about an inch in diameter. Looks. perfect round bright red tomatoes in clusters of 5-10. Only cracks when ripe fruit are left on the vine during rain. Crack size : Just the skin cracks open not the whole tomato.

Update; In the last month we have had extremely warm weather with with near 100 or 100+ weather for several weeks, which is extremely unusual! Keeping that in mind, here is my report. Largest size of fruit is what would be typical with the variety, unless otherwise stated. Plant out was ~ the first of May. I will report on the growth & productions of the varieties planted. Amana Orange: Planted in ground. It is ~ 3.5 feet tall and has ~ 15-20 fruit on it. Blossom drop has been insignificant compared to others. No ripe fruit as of yet. Big Beef x 2: Both planted in a raised bed. Each is 4.5 - 5 feet tall with 30-35 fruit on each. I've had 1 fruit break with color about 2 weeks ago,but it had BER so tossed. Brandy Boy: 1 planted in the ground, 1 in the raised bed. The raised be one is ~ 5 feet tall with ~ 15 fruit on it. The in-ground plant is ~ 4 feet tall and has ~ 24 fruit. Both have had significant blossom drop. The raised be plant has several tomatoes with BER. No fruit harvested yet. Cuostralee: One plant in ground, 1 in raised bed. Both are ~ 5 feet tall and each with ~25 fruit. None harvested. Several on the raised bed have BER. German Red Strawberry: 1 plant in the raised bed. This is a smaller plant and wilty looking just like the Opalka. It is a smaller plant, ~ 4 feet tall. It has ~20 fruit, only one with BER. No fruit harvested. Indian Stripe: 1 plant in-ground, 1 in raised bed. Although each of these is on the smaller size, ~3 feet tall, they have ~35 tomatoes on each plant and some with some radial cracking. Although several are blushing, none have been harvested yet. So it appears that this will be my first (non-cherry) tomato to ripen. Kelloggs Breakfast: My 1 plant in ground is ~5 feet tall and has ~24 fruit of which none have been harvested. Moskvich. 1 in a 18 gallon container. This was planted ~ the 25th of May and is behind the others. It has a completely different growth pattern which may be consistent with the variety. It is not yet 2 feet tall and has ~ 15 fruit the largest of which is about the size of a ping-pong ball. None have been harvested yet. Neves Azorean Red: Two plants in a raised bed. Each are about 5 feet tall and have 6-15 fruit on each. These have had significant blossom drop, although a few nice looking tomatoes have formed, with the largest about baseball size. I hope they taste good as I want to try again next year. Opalka: 1 plant in-ground, one in raised bed. Plants are 4.5-5' tall, with the plant in the raised bed taller. Tomato formation is nothing like last year, again may be due to extreme heat. About 15 - 20 fruit each, none of which has been harvested. Sunsugar: 1 plant in-ground. I have grown sungold the last several years and it was a very prolific grower and producer. This plant is only ~ 3.5 feet tall at this point. We have harvested several tomatoes, which were good and I expect the flavor to improve after the first few. No blossom drop. Overall, there has been significant drop and BER with our plants in raised beds, but those in-raised bed plants have been able to grow more vigorously. It has been an unusually hot early summer and I am sure this is negatively affecting fruit production. As I live in a drier climate I have not had any disease to contend with and troublesome critters have not been a problem. Fortunately, we have enough plants that we should still produce enough tomatoes for fresh eating and canning. hth & regards, Tom