Last time I made it, I added a seafood mix and it was a hit! Here's my mother's recipe and of course you have to put a dollop of mayo on top :o) Gonna skip the veggies and add the seafood with finely chopped onion or maybe grated. Sharing my mom's aspic 4 cups V-8 juice 3 envelopes unflavored gelatin 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce 1 tablespoon cider vinegar 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice 1 tablespoon grated onion 1 teaspoon salt dash of Tabasco sauce 1 cup finely chopped celery 1 cup sliced stuffed green olives 8 romaine or leaf lettuce leaves mayonnaise for garnish In a large bowl combine cup of the V-8 juice and the gelatin and let soak to soften. In a saucepan, heat the remaining V-8 juice, add it to the gelatin and stir till the gelatin has dissolved. Add the Worcestershire, vinegar, lemon juice, onion, salt and Tabasco. Stir well. Place the bowl in the refrigerator and chill until the mixture is slightly thickened. Add the celery and olives and stir until well blended. Transfer the mixture to a shallow baking dish or eight individual molds, cover with plastic wrap and chill until firm. Serve the aspic on lettuce leaves and top each portion with a dollop of mayonnaise.

I love tomato aspic! I'm sure everyone will enjoy yours.

I wouldn't worry if the soil is compact. You can grow tomatoes in clay if you really want to (and there are both pros and cons to this). If your area is arid, you might not have problems with fungal diseases from mud splashing on your leaves, either. With all that ground cover from the grass around, I'm guessing you wouldn't need to worry about that as much, though. That said, however, if you have really loose soil atop clay, tomatoes may hesitate to venture into the clay, and just fill up the loose soil. I've seen this happen in a container with about half clay (on the bottom) and half potting soil (on the top). The clay was almost untouched, by comparison. One thing you can do is grow your tomatoes out bigger before you plant them outdoors (give them more light indoors for faster, stronger growth). You don't need a special grow light (CFLs will work, even if they're not 6500k, but higher color temperatures are better for leaf growth; lower ones are better for flowering and protecting your seedlings from damping off disease, but they'll help leaf growth, too). Then, you can use a post hole digger to dig a narrow, but deep hole, and plant the plant. Because it'll be deep, competing with weeds shouldn't be much of a problem insofar as nutrient competition goes, unless the grass or weeds have deep roots or are parasitic. Tomatoes will also grow roots all along the buried stem. Normally, tomatoes don't need to be planted particularly deep, but it does help them get more water and nutrients. More nutrients doesn't necessarily mean bigger tomatoes. You have to keep in mind that the nutrient balance also matters (not just the pure amount of a certain one). Deep tomatoes seem to be easier to dry farm. However deep you plant them, though, make sure there's lots of foliage up top, still. If you plant them super deep but only leave a few leaves up top, they might take a long time to grow big, but if you have plenty of leaves up top, they should grow fast. If you want big tomatoes (since I brought it up) get a variety that gets big in your climate and conditions, and make sure it gets enough potassium, phosphorus and magnesium. Not all tomatoes are the same, and many have different requirements. Where do you live? I recommend saving your seeds every year (from tomatoes with the traits you like the most) and regrowing them, because it should help whatever variety you're growing to adapt better to your conditions. Landracing could be even better, but you might not have room for that. :) As someone mentioned earlier, container gardening can also be great. I know someone who said she got about 100lbs of tomatoes from one Early Girl tomato plant in a container with nothing but Miracle Gro potting soil. She may have fertilized with Miracle Gro, too, but I think the only fertilizer was that which the soil came fertilized with. The problem with containers is that they can dry out fast in at least some climates. Having a narrow opening at the top may decrease evaporation (but unless your soil drains well, it may make watering take longer).

I thought I'd put on an update on progress of tomato plant "clones". I had pretty good luck with getting the cuttings to root. I now have nine fully-rooted hybrid tomato plant clones. Those plants under the lights are peppers. Red Cheese, Yellow Cheese, Gold Cheese, and Jalapeno. I grow these sometimes every year, other times only every-other year. It depends on how good the crop was last time and whether I have enough already put up for another whole year. This year, I am close to being depleted of both. With the jalapeno peppers, this is the recipe I use: http://nchfp.uga.edu/publications/nchfp/factsheets/pickled_jalapeno_rings.pdf Cheese peppers are actually best just seeded and chopped and popped into the freezer in ziplock bags. No blanching is required. You will be surprised how fast the freezer bag fills up, the peppers don't look big enough to yield much. But they have very thick walls and very small seed cavities. If you leave them on the plant till they start to turn color, they will finish ripening in the house after you pick them, and the flavor improves a great deal when they are ripe. That business of using a pepper while it's green was just a marketing ploy in the 1950's and 60's so people would buy them that way, as they had a hard time shipping peppers when they were ripe. Lots of people think they don't like peppers because they've only tasted green ones. In the process, I actually broke the top out of one of the tomato plants, so one of these "clones" is that piece I broke off, and here is the piece that's left, trying to pull up a new main stem: It seems like I always plant seeds too early. Many years, I have planted seeds in December. This year, I managed to wait until about the 15th of January. I've had many people just laugh at me and say flatly that they'll die before it's time to get them transplanted and then they just dismiss me. I even had one man just roll his eyes at me and his expression and tone of voice let me know he felt I was a pure-dee Stupid-Butt. Well, Bless his Heart, he can be that way if it gives him pleasure, and I'm always happy to oblige in helping somebody be happy. One year I actually DID plant my seeds late, and something went wrong, they all damped off and died, and then there wasn't time to grow more. So I'll just say, "this works for me". I've never dared to intentionally top-off my tomato plants before. I had it sorta done for me one year when we got a late frost (in April), and my plants were in the garden by then. Everything that was above the surface died, but the roots sent up new plants and I did get tomatoes that year. Just not till fall, as they lived thru July and August, but didn't make any flowers till the weather cooled. But this spring, every time I watered, I'd look this Little Sprout tomato over, and also the top half that had broken off the same plant, both still doing well, and I thought, "What have I got to lose?" The chances of at least one of the halves of the plant would live were pretty good. I mean, the bottom half is shorter, but still healthy and well-rooted, afterall. So I'd be no worse off before if none of the cuttings lived. And if any of the cuttings lived, I'd be that much more to the good. So today, I bit the bullet and went all in. These are the hybrid plants that were grown from seed, and they are shown here after I lopped off the top. Today they get to be outside for a full day. We're expecting a bit of a frost tonight or tomorrow morning, so they will be brought in for the night. Starting tomorrow, they can stay out 24/7 because the night temps will allow it. I do have to protect them from the wind if it's going to go gale-force on me, but they will be better able to tolerate wind now that they are more compact. They are handling the outside temperatures and the morning sun that they get in this spot just fine. They will be getting planted into the garden very soon now. These are the tops that I cut off, dipped in rooting hormone powder (can be found at WMT or most garden centers, looks like a vitamin bottle, with loose white powder inside, $5 or less, depending), and settled down in cups of potting soil:They will be staying inside, under fluorescent lighting, until they show signs of new growth. If they all live, I will have increased my inventory of hybrid tomato plants by at least 20, and maybe twice that, because each one of these cups has a plant top and a smaller side-cutting in it. If we get a super-late frost and I lose the plants in the garden, then I'll still have these. Otherwise, I may plant some of these if I have room, or I can sell them or donate them somewhere. I might add that I use a lot of "recyclable materials" in the garden. These cups are 32-oz Quick-Trip drink cups I rescued from a big container at the park. I burn a small hole in the center of each cup bottom for drainage, and use them every year till they turn brittle and crack with age. I think some of the ones I'm still using might be as old as 8 years. The white "boxes" that hold four cups, each, are Aldi kitty litter one-gallon plastic jugs, with the tops cut off straight, using a wood-burner tool. My DIL doesn't mind bringing them to me. I use them in lots of different ways and am glad to get them. The plants are tied with strips of an old T-shirt to 12" long sticks saved from the garden clean-up. A little support goes a long way when transplants are in this stage. Well, that's all I have to share about that. I CAN STILL HEAR THE CRICKETS SINGING HERE!!! WHERE IS EVERYBODY??? Did you go to Facebook? And how's THAT working out for ya? ;~0 Hugs, ILENE