As usual, Ken's right. It belongs in the ground. I just want to say that I really like your seedling. It's got very nice streaking and good color. The official parentage of it would be Fickle Blue Genes x OP. Fickle Blue Genes is an excellent breeder. It is from William Lachman x Hypoleuca and usually produces nice blue color in its seedlings. If you want to know the potential of your seedling you should try selfing it. That is to say using its own pollen on itself, and growing those seeds. The resulting seedlings from a selfed cross will let you know what traits your seedling can pass on to its progeny. Happy growing. Steve

Like Lubadub I'm in central PA but I have difficulty responding to your post since I thought this was a good tomato season and I can't define a single variety of over 280 that I've grown this year that was not worth giving another try. There are a few hybrids and a few heirloom varieties that I really admire but nothing stands out as a failure. If you want any tomato to harvest before August you just need to plant earlier. I planted most of my tomatoes in high tunnels by late March and was harvesting by late May. I'm still picking although the majority of fruits I've picked lately are for the green tomato market. I'll likely pick for 2 more weeks and then call it quits. Didn't grow 4th of July this year but it was always one of the first (and last) to pick. That size tomato is just not a great seller for me. I'd probably like to try it again next year and mix fruits in with the BumbleBee series from Johnny's Seeds. I believe it would help to show those better in a display. Since you commented on Ghost peppers I will comment that they did not do well this year for me and from comments of a few people who bought plants from me they were not doing well for others. Larger fruited hot peppers and sweet peppers did well though. I'm still picking (from under fabric) and sales are going well. I guess in summary I'll admit that this was a cooler and wetter year than normal but I have little to complain about. I believe I'll aim to have another high tunnel in operation by next spring and possibly plant a few more heirloom varieties that don't have the typical hybrid appearance (Mortgage lifter just looks like another red tomato).

My bean report: This year we had kind of strange weather (though with every year now being strange in a new way, I guess that makes it a "normal" year). Like drloyd, here we had an early, very warm spring, and are currently in a late, very warm autumn (going to be 70 degrees all this week!), but the summer in between was unusually cool and almost completely missed any of the heatwaves rolling over the rest of the country. The coolness made beans slow and tomatoes a full month late to bear. Anyway: --Alma Whitaker Cornfield-- A bit on the late side but did very very well, healthy tall vines totally loaded with handfuls of pods. Smallish, curved pods tightly packed with small, pinto-patterned seeds. I ate some as full beans and they stringed easily and cooked up pretty quick. Got these from Remy of Sample Seeds. Planted 6 May, flowered 8 Aug, dry seed 14 Sep. --Blue Shackamaxon-- A favorite of mine and in my opinion a real winner. Did very well, as always. Tall plants with shiny black seeds and pods that turn purple at maturity. Great-flavored dry bean. My seed was getting low so I grew a bunch out at my folks' place well away from any other beans, since this variety seems to cross very readily, both as a pollen recipient and donor. --Clarendon Wonder-- Stringless snap bush with large bright red seeds. Australian heritage variety bred by Hawkesbury Agricultural College in the early 1900s. Did pretty well in a container. Planted 4 May, dry seed 24 July. --Gunlik-- Dual-purpose bush bean. Small black seeds look just like Midnight/Black Turtle, but the pods are sweet. Did pretty well despite being grown in a container in a shady spot. Planted 6 May, dry seed 30 June, and all of the plants survived the first harvest and are currently loaded with a second crop just past the shelly stage. --Inka Pea Bean-- Did quite well despite being in a shady spot. Relatively short vines ( petered out at 6'), and seed in the usual pea-bean bicolor red & white pattern, but with pretty pinkish streaks inside the red part. Planted 4 May, dry seed 1 Aug. --Kaiser Friedrich-- Did very well. Fairly tall but well-behaved vines; when they outgrew their trellis I looped them down to the bottom and grew them back up the same way again, making approx. 9' feet of vine total. Pods stringless, flattish, yellow at first getting a neon pink blush, and purplish when dry. Bright purple seeds. Old German variety. Planted 6 May, dry seed 2 Sep. --Kuma Anna's Charcoal Grey-- Got utterly smothered by the Apios growing in the same bed, so I only got out 3x the seed I put in! Pole snap. Planted 2 May, dry seed 30 July. --Lavender Bush German-- Bush dual-purpose variety with seeds a unique lilac color I haven't seen on any other bean. Did pretty well in a container. Planted 4 May, dry seed 25 July. --Mariazeller Bush-- Pretty seed, but didn't seem to like being container-grown and hardly made anything. --Mountain Pima Burro & Caballito-- Poor germination from old seed, I'll have to grow this out again next year to bring numbers back up. Weakly climbing plants, beautiful seeds, tasty thin-skinned dry beans, wish I'd got enough to actually eat any this year. --Norridgewock-- Usual-looking red & white pea bean. Short vines. Didn't have many seed to start with and had damping-off issues, so only got replacement seed for a harvest. --Riesenkorn aus Omsk-- "Giant-seed from Omsk," which sounded intriguing. Summer-planted bush plants that weren't very happy with the container I grew them in. Seeds like large kidney bean size. Limas: --Black Cave Dweller-- Bush lima that turned out to be day-length-sensitive, so I haven't gotten any seed off them yet. --Madagascar-- Large-seeded pole lima. Planted late, so just maturing pods now. Plants doing well despite tomato competition. --Ping Zebra-- Finally deigned to make flowers this month, so I'll see if anything actually comes of them. Cowpeas/Yard-longs: --Washday-- mostly-bush cowpea that did pretty well despite being smothered by Apios. Seed coats tend to split. This is supposed to be fast-cooking, and I think would be considered a "lady pea," but I haven't tried any yet. Seeds small and ivory with some red speckling around the hilum. --Tiger-striped-- Yard-long with red stripes on green. I have a bit of trouble with yard-longs due to the cool nights here, but this one did pretty well for a yard-long. Not day-length-sensitive, and made a couple big handfuls of snaps. Didn't eat any yet but it's still producing. P. coccineus Runner Beans: --Ayocote Amarillo & Ayocote Morado-- Some beans from dinner planted on a whim, they made nothing at all in the summer but perked up slightly in the autumn to give me a very small harvest (like half a handful per plant). --Tucomares Mixed-- Complete crop failure this year. Every legume in their planter shriveled up and died and I'm not sure if it was blight, fungus, herbicide-contaminated potting soil, or what (all-new store-bought soil in only that planter). Misc: --adzuki beans Buff, and Blue Speckled-- both did pretty good this year, making a decent number of pods with seeds of the proper size. Seed for both from Anpetu Oihankesni. Planted 2 May, dry seed 30 July. --unnamed buff-seeded rice bean (Vigna umbellata)-- Second year growing this, and it again did well sprawling over a short trellis. The seed pods corkscrew open explosively when fully ripe, so I've taken to picking them either in the shelly stage or over a deep bucket. Going to try a dal recipe with these next week. --unnamed hyacinth beans-- A veritable explosion of neon purple flowers and pods on horizontally-greedy vines (were quite useful for separating P. vulgaris bean varieties from each other). Seed looks like tiny Oreos. Planted early May, dry seed 12 Sep. --unnamed red-seeded sword bean-- Made tall thick vines, but seems to be day-length-sensitive as it didn't bloom until well into fall. Currently ripening a few thick pods that look like they'll have only 1-2 seeds each. --groundnut/Apios americana-- Went utterly mad this year and swallowed all in their path to form a very leafy 4'x4'x5' hedge out of their 4'x4' raised bed. Flowered a lot (and smells like your great-great-aunt's perfume, pyew) but I don't think set seed. I can see some tubers poking up from the soil a bit and it looks like there're going to be masses of them to try out some recipes.

Compared to what? Most of my stuff grew fairly well, although a bunch of stuff was predated by the critters (sweet potatoes, chaya, katuk, blueberry, blackberry, etc). There are things that don't fruit well in our dry winters/springs (blackberry). And then some of the garden stuff starts wilting in late summer (cowpeas, beans, strawberries, redbud, buckeye). The weeds did great this year though!