My experience with Purple Majesty has been that you can actually purchase it for less than the .233 from Johnny's. But, let's say you did buy it from them. You can pot up 5 of those plants in quart containers and sell them for $5 each. Thus, you would recoup your investment. We did sell some potted the year before last. The question I hated the most was, "Is that corn?" I think if you pinch out the terminal bud, you will get better side shoots. Live and learn. We didn't do this. So, we got a large center shoot with smaller side shoots. The cuts were wonderful for late season. Some drawbacks. You need to cut them before they produce all that yucky yellow pollen. You don't notice the pollen in the field because all the happy insects take care of it. It can be pretty nasty a couple days after cutting. Second, the root systems are just a bear. We think they are worse than corn, and way worse than sunflowers. You can save the seed. I had a rather large dried flower arrangement with the Purple Majesty; and, I fully intended to save the seed. But, I walked the arrangement out to the compost pile last spring with an obviously empty mind because I never thought twice about it. We didn't grow it last season either!!!

Hi Bill, It is so nice to hear from you today. I hope y'all got some rain this week. We did! I agree with you that over-loving one's tomato plants is counter-productive because it gives you lots of watery, underflavored tomatoes. A term commonly used to refer to overwatering and overfeeding is "loving your plants to death". I am really careful about not overwatering (which, considering our droughts here, is not that hard as long as I don't turn on the soaker hoses too often) and not overfeeding. I've also noticed that plants that are overfed and overwatered have incredible pest problems and more disease issues as well. Bill, my absolute worst tomato year ever in my whole life was here in southern OK in 2004. I remember that I got the plants into mostly raised beds (two rows were at grade level in only slightly amended soil) with well-amended soil and I got them planted pretty early. By the end of May I had nice, tall sturdy plants covered with ripening fruit. In June, 12" of rain fell. Twelve inches. That was the end of what had seemed to be a promising tomato year. All the tomatoes had poor flavor and texture and most were spitters. I hope we never have 12" of rain in one month again during tomato growing season. The rain finally stopped falling sometime in July, but I didn't have tomatoes with good flavor until late August or early September. The next two years were drought years also plagued by wildfire, and in 2005 and 2006 we had really, really good-flavored tomatoes and a pretty decent harvest considering the drought and heat. For us, as for most of OK, 2007's spring and early summer was excessively wet and the tomatoes were late and poorly-flavored. Once again the rain stopped in July, and we got decently flavored tomatoes a month or so later. Last year's drought gave us tomatoes with great flavor, even after I completely stopped watering the garden when the water bills became unbearably high. So, I don't really want to "hope for drought", but it does give us our best-flavored tomatoes (and our hottest peppers too). Even though we had over an inch of rain this week here (1.7" to be exact), that only brings 2009's rainfall up to about 50% of normal, and the drought is forecast to persist or improve only slightly, so I am expecting a good tomato year here. This year I am going to grow about 30 plants in containers so I can control the moisure a little more for them than I can for in-the-ground plantings. I can't wait to see how you like SunGold. The only people I've ever known who didn't like SunGold were, perhaps, picking them too early or maybe overwatering them. You have to let them get a deep golden-orange. Sadly, the SunGolds split pretty easily and don't hold for a long time after being harvested which is why you don't see them for sale often in grocery stores or farmer's markets. If you like SunGold, though, and want to grow it to sell, there is a very similar improved variety called SunSugar that doesn't crack and holds for a longer period of time. The flavor of SunSugar (at least to my tastebuds) is identical to the flavor of SunGold. I get the best tomatoes when I give them only organic tomato food that is low in the necessary macronutrients. I like Espoma Tomato Tone which is a 4-7-10. (For anyone newer to gardening, that's 4% nitogen, 7% phosphate, and 10% potash.) What I really like about it is that it contains all the micronutrients tomatoes need: calcium, magnesium, sulfur, boron, chlorine, cobalt, copper, iron, manganese, molybdenum, sodium, and zinc. I give each plant a handful of Tomato Tone at planting time and then I don't necessarily feed them again unless they are showing signs of nutritional deficiency. I don't water any more often than I have to in order to get the plants to a decent size by the time flowering begins, and I water as little as possible once they are setting fruit, especially as fruit begins to ripen. I like to describe the effect of stress on tomato plants to new gardeners this way: The purpose of a tomato plant is to produce seeds to perpetuate itself. If the plant is living a cushy life and is not in danger of dying, it doesn't get in a big hurry to make seeds and, if it is an indeterminate tomato, it just keeps getting bigger and bigger. Why shouldn't it? The plant, after all, is living the good life and has reason to think that life will end any time soon. On the other hand, if a tomato plant is a little dry, a little hot, and a little thirsty and hungry, it tends to produce more seed, and earlier, because it is hurrying up to make seed to replace itself in case it dies. So, stress (up to a point) is good since it gives us more seeds (inside our fruit). For most of us here in Oklahoma, it isn't too hard to see to it that our plants get the stress they need--Mother Nature sort of takes care of that for us! LOL Dawn

When I use that term what I mean is that I was the first to list it in the SSE Yearbook and usually it's a variety that I got from someone else that hadn't been available publicaly before, or in the case of the OP Ramapo or the OP OTV Brandywine, for instance, I had made selections from a hybrid and grown it out to the OP state myself. ***** Zebra you've posted the same as you did above more than once and it's perfectly clear that you're referring to me. And I already addressed that in the first post I made here and cut and pasted above in this post. For some varieties being discussed, yes, I do say I introduced it, as explained above, not b'c I'm bragging or have an ego problem as you and two others might contend, but b'c it means that I've grown the variety longer than anyone else and that can be of help to those who are considering growing it themselves, and has been of help in doing so. So when folks ask about a certain variety that I have introduced, and especially if no others respond to the question b'c I don't always do it, I welcome their questions about it and try to answer as best I can. Carolyn

I too ordered the Brindebella Purple Prince from Hirt's, and now I'm wondering whether Hirt's is mistakenly misrepresenting it as the "Purple Prince" rose by Nola Simpson from New Zealand. Anyone know? There is a "Brindebella Purple Prince" sold wholesale by Sun Fire Nurseries in the U.S., and that's what appears to be the rose sold by Hirt's: http://www.helpmefind.com/rose/l.php?l=2.72335.2&tab=1. I'm certain this is the Hirt's-sold rose, because Hirt's sells another rose from the "Brindebella" line that Sun Fire Nurseries markets. There is a different "Purple Prince" rose bred by Nola Simpson in New Zealand and sold by Style Roses in the U.K. That's the one with the impressive photos, claims of very strong fragrance from 6"-inch blooms. http://www.helpmefind.com/rose/l.php?l=2.72745&tab=1. But the "Brindebella Purple Prince," according to the info from the patent application that is on HelpMeFind.com, was bread in Australia by Sylvia and John Gray, and the blooms are only 4". Maybe someone at Hirt's marketing team Googled "Purple Prince" and then copied and pasted the info and photos from the Style Roses website in the U.K.? Oh well. The Brindebella looks great too, and the patent application claims "complete" resistance to black spot and strongly fragrant blooms. Sounds good.