I am adding to this old thread that is 15 years old. I have picked up a lot of info from these threads on numerous cultivars that has helped me in my trials of many varieties. I found it interesting that farmerdilla has pale colored Yellow Doll. Different soils and temps can have effects like this obviously. Yellow Doll grown here in Florida is not a pale yellow but takes on a nice bright yellow. I have been growing that early variety here for a very long time. I grow it for it's earliness, for to me, it is the best early variety I have grown. Has anyone grown the variety Royalty? That variety is a 20-22 lb melon which supposedly ripens in 70 days. Noted for being a great pollinator and has an extended flowering period which will help with a seedless variety if you are growing them. I am going to put that one out in South Florida and start it very early so I can have watermelon starting out in early March. I also just noticed this thread started out as most vigorous vines! lol I think Orangeglo is at the top of my list but I have not grown some known for their aggressive nature and am not interested in doing so. I grow strictly for flavor and production. I will sacrifice production to get the quality of flavor I want, but if I can get both, then that is the cats meow. To me, nothing beat Gold Strike! It had it all. I do not see it ever being available again, which saddens me!

I have a few thoughts... I've tried cane pruning on a couple vines, and I couldn't tell any difference in the fruit quality or the yield so I abandoned the idea. I find spur pruning to be quicker and a lot simpler. In my opinion, either method is fine unless you are dealing with one of those few varieties that do no produce fruit on the first few buds. Dis-regarding those varieties, just go with what you know and what works for you. The only other reason I can see that cane pruning would be better is that buds with high light exposure usually produce more fruit. With cane pruning you can choose the canes that got the most light whereas with spur pruning your choices are very limited. We have plenty of sunshine here, so I don't see it as an issue, but in Oregon (not as much sunshine) it may be more important. I'm guessing the distinction between table and wine grapes is because, with wine grapes, you don't want high yield (many clusters are often dropped at veraison) so being a little less fruitful is no problem. I've visited several commercial vineyards here in Idaho. We have both table and wine grape vineyards in the area, and all that I have visited are spur pruning and producing very high quality fruit. I know that what is best for commercial growers is not always what is best for "backyard" growers, but in this case, it does show that spur pruning is commercially viable (at least in the Snake River Valley). Fruitnut, I think it was you who, a couple of years ago, advised me to visit the U of I research facility. I'm really glad you did, I got some vines (cuttings) from them and learned a lot about viticulture and fruit growing in general. Thanks for the suggestion.

I really like this thread, as I am especially interested in blackberry flavor. Ouchita - planted as a large specimen in 2014. Vigorous, upright grower, throwing canes 10' in the air. It is also suckering like crazy, up to 10' feet away, which I view as a plus. Earliest fruit for me this year, mid June and is finishing now, with no more unripe berries left on the bush. I may be harvesting early, but I find this one quite sour. Chester - planted in 2014, only the roots survived an early frost. It recovered extremely well and is another vigorous grower. It has been tip-rooting and I have about four new plants out of that. The fruit is ripening in the last week of June and I expect to continue through the first few weeks of July, based on the unripe berries on the plant. These harvest sweet than Ouchita. Neither have much flavor beyond sweet / sour. I planted Black Satin and Apache this year on a hill in partial shade, we'll see how they do. Apache's first cane bore a lot of fruit this year, nothing outstanding in the flavor department.

I'm pretty new to growing. I live in an apartment in Brooklyn, NYC(zone 6b-7a) and container grow on my balcony. I'm actually crazy about Black Krim. It was early, and in a 5 gallon is still popping out tomatoes. I moved it indoors and 8 months later I've harvested at least 30 delicious tomatoes. I'm really partial to the taste, beat the black from tula and cherokee purple I bought at the farmers market. I successfully cloned two from the mother plant and have already harvested tomatoes off of those. But also wasted time on: San Marzano: Blossom end rot on almost all. Got about 6 decent tomatoes. Yellow pear-terrible, just inedible- produced great, worst tasting Bush Early girl- not worth it. Grocery store quality flavor Containers choice- weak performer, in a larger container than Black krim. boring Indigo rose- Such a bummer on this one. Pretty but hard to tell when ripe. Tasted best when any not purple area was peach colored. Red tasted overripe. Took forever to ripen Any micro mini tomato. All determinite to the point they died with unripe tomatoes on them. Hahms Gelbe was the best, but still not worth it. So I'd Highly recommend black krim for containers, and the other winners were the mainstay cherries Sunsuger and sungold. Husky Cherry red was alright too. Still have Black krim, My GFs german johnson and others under a grow light(600 led) .It's crazy how they fight for a single light source, but all are still putting out tomatoes. Cheers! Ben