Cleocrafta - free protein! LOL Sorry, just being a smarty-pants, don't know what you could do to prevent the worm. (I think your theory about the egg being laid in the blossom is correct.) Guess you just avoid the brown-streaked fruits; hope they are not many. If the green fruit is toxic, it is not so to squirrels & chipmunks or I'd have no more of those pests in my yard. (Of course, that is true of many plants & fungi we humans cannot eat.) They are getting ALL of them from the various beds I had tried to hide them in! Someone a couple of years ago wrote that "the Seed packet says germination in 28-35 days at 77-85 degrees" and that the plants were determinate. Usually I just allow the plants that have self-sowed pop up in the garden but this year I wanted to try some new varieties so started them under lights as I do my other veggie plants and they certainly did not take anywhere near as long as mentioned above. Certainly no longer than peppers (which always come up quicker than packet info says). I do use bottom heat for germinating nightshade family seeds. As far as determinate... Uh, no. Like the Eveready bunny they just keep going and going and going.... All but one of the ground cherry plants I have had over the years grow no more than about 12"-18" tall, but sprawl out in all directions (and do not root along the stems as tomatoes do - probably a good thing!). But this year I had one appear in my raspberry bed that has gotten nearly 3 feet tall. I think it used the canes for support as both plants grew. Of course, the squirrels found that one, too... (but seem not to be eating the raspberries, thankfully.)

oh, heck, I don't core and seed either. The great thing about doing this with cherry toms is that it is NOT a huge, long job --- I take 15 minutes to slice up a batch (2 cookie trays' worth or so), put 'em in the oven, and by the time I go to bed they're done. Now, the one pain with some cherry toms is that they're not all the same size by a long shot, so some dry faster than others. (Depends on the variety; Black Cherry or Galinas [my fave] or Dr. Carolyn [also lovely --- I think it is derived from Galinas] will be mostly about the same size, but Sweet 100 or Sungold grow in trusses with bigger at one end and smaller at the other.) SO if I have those kinds in there, what I end up doing is checking every half hour or so, and quickly picking out those that are done. Now that I can spot the done ones easily, this takes no more than a minute or so. What do I use them for? I put them in pasta dishes or in salads most often. I also blend them up in dips or salad dressing. Or I eat them for a snack. The Sungolds, especially, are SO sweet when dried, they are almost like little raisins or figs. I used some once, in fact, in a roasted pork recipe that called for dried figs or apricots --- it was VERY yummy. No prep at all is needed to use them; just take 'em out of the ziploc baggies in the freezer. They defrost within a short time at room temp because they are so small, and they don't need chopping. Often recipes that call for sundried tomatoes will assume you have bought them in a jar packed in olive oil, and will tell you to drain them first. Sometimes the recipe calls for using some of the leftover tomato-y oil, in which case with the home-dried ones you have to add olive oil separately. I like hte idea of grinding some up into a tomato paste substitute, will have to try that! Have done it with dried hot peppers but not yet with toms. Looks like I will have a BIG tomato harvest this year --- the plants are a jungle already --- so woo hoo! Zabby

I grow for personal use and to sell a few extra. My main cherries are the two Suns and Sweet Baby Girl (stocked up on its seed for the future). Variety is added by Black Cherry, Snow White, Coyote, and Mexico Midget. The currents have very few fruit per bract, and have to be cut off, stem and all, to avoid splitting, sometimes I cut the whole bract. MM is probably the best OP cherry I ever tasted, very comparable to Sun Gold. A few tiny MM on top of a basket makes it appealing. Coyote does not add appeal because it looks like a weaked Snow White. May stop it. Although I detest its bad taste, may add a Yellow Pear next year based on discussions in this thread. I found this thread while researching hybrid alternatives to Black Cherry and Snow White. Based on information here, I will try Esterina. However, have any of you tried Black Pearl or Italian Ice? Would you grow one of them instead of the OPs? I hate the long DTM of Black Cherry and Snow White. You lose a month of production at the beginning of the season, then they are absolutely loaded with unripe cherries when frost comes (Ohio-6a). Also considering Orange Zinger. Ball advertises that it produces more "usable" fruit than Sun Gold because it resists cracking. Don't know if adds a new color to a basket. Is it more orange than gold? No reviews available on Internet. When I posted a question about it, one person responded to its taste negatively. Also planning to test Sun Green (by Takita) for taste, possibly to add a green to a basket.

I don't get a box that says "location" with a right click. I tried properties and got a URL, but only got the above. I have Windows 8, of course, the invention of the devil. If I click Image, I get this... [URL=http://s18.photobucket.com/user/annie1992/media/Food/IMG_1755.jpg.html][IMG]http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b110/annie1992/Food/IMG_1755.jpg[/IMG][/URL] So, as usual, I learned nothing except that my backspace key sticks, LOL. Annie