I saved seeds this summer from a blackk krim variety and a bullet shaped yellow red stripped tomato for trade for cucumber or gerckin

Hi El, Sorry about not getting back to you. Last week was finals week, then this weekend we have been working on getting the garden spot ready. Jean is right, you are only watering your plants about a sixth of a gallon every other day. I have read several times (just can't find it now) that tomatoes need about an inch of water a week, or about 4.5 to 5.0 gallons of water a week on a yard square. The weird thing is that leaf roll is almost always a problem with over watering. It may be that the clay soil, even if broken up, is holding water like a bathtub would, especially if the clay were dug down into deeper under it than under the other two. The water would tend to pool in the center of the bed. The plants on the ends would have better drainage because they are more exposed to the area where the soil meets the boards of the raised bed. I would suggest a soil moisture meter. You can get some pretty good ones for under $10. What you are really looking for is a way to compare the amount of water in your raised bed at various places. I have one that the probe is about 9 or 10 inches long. Since that is much longer than my finger, I figure that gives me a better picture of what the soil moisture is closer to the roots of the tomatoes. Hope that helps. Betsy Here is a link that might be useful: Number 15 is about leaf roll.

So, I'm starting to think SOMETHING is going on with my tomatos. Not only are my Romas looking like BK but so are my larger toms(Neves Azorean Red, Moskvitch and Red Beefsteak). I picked a basket of tomatos for myself and MIL on Friday and they were all the same colour except the cherry toms(bright red). It was kinda weird to see them all of differing shapes but the same purpley-brick red-my MIL said "I thought you were growing a bunch of DIFFERENT heirlooms!" Sheesh! Kterlep, your BK sounds like it's doing what mine did-but mine seem to be pretty juicy like the BK and have good flavour. Missingtheobvious, it is entirely possible that the BK seeds were planted with the Romas-I remember a few seeds were caught by a breeze when I was sowing them outside in March-I did think I was careful, however ;) Let me clarify-I sowed them in their little pots outside but brought them INSIDE to germinate. I have to do any plant/soil project outside so as not to encourage the interest of my cats who, in past years, helped themselves to my seedlings after watching me painstakingly sow them. They seem to ignore anything newly planted if they never witnessed the 'act' of planting. Anyway,I'm really at a loss to explain the coloration of my other tomatos-at first I thought maybe with the crappy weather(lots of rain & cool)they were rotting BUT the flavour of them is very good! Don't know what to think!

Jim, I have plenty of plants that don't do as well when I fuss, too. LOL. I've learned over the years to just ignore the hell out of my house plants because every time I leave for a week, they grow. When I'm home, they do not LOL! It also becomes glaringly clear when I come back and nothing outside died--in fact, some thrive if nothing is happening to them, including water. It's helped me cut down on pepper watering a LOT though I'm sure I still give them more than they need. But what I can't stand is ugly. Bring inherently lazy and hating the heat, I look at my overgrown mess and plan for DAYS just to go out and prune, tie and otherwise clean them up. It just annoys me. I may very well be slowing them down due to cutting off so many leaves but it is what it is. I have never had one die and short of this year when I got such a late, late start--I usually am sick of tomatoes in general by September. Of course, come January, I plant seeds again anyway, Walnut trees... All I can say is don't do it, The two black walnuts I had were massive, each being over 30 years old at the time, at least. The amount of shade they provide is ridiculous, but that's not the problem. It's the juglone that exists in every part of their being that kills off everything nearby....even my containers would suffer and in-ground was impossible. Other than the heavy canopy, the roots...omg, these roots would run through the lawn, under the house and basically everywhere. Because I had two on opposite sides of the property, everything in between the 100 feet or so in the middle was the dead zone. Therefore, all the way around the perimeter of the house was a small plot of land where I could plant. I suspect nothing had been planted there since the dark ages. Since I discovered this juglone issu late that first year, I bought two seedlings and planted them. This was back in....1998 or so, long before I knew any tomato is not just a tomato. I forget the variety...Big Something...but be it on account of the juglone or the location or something I did, those tomatoes were nasty. NASTY. LOL And forget about eating walnuts. You'll wage war on squirrels...and you will lose LOL. I have seen squirrels sitting on my fence eating walnuts and over time, probably because they knew I was terrified of them, they'd sit there and chuck walnut shells at me! Nasty, vile creatures. To this day, I just flat out hate squirrels. Hate. Needless to say, I do not miss that house. I shelled out over $100K on remodeling that house and my 3 month project took 15 months because of the worst contractor in history, during which time I washed dishes in the bathtub and cooked on ranges in the garage for my family of four. During the open house, the roof caved from the rain because the foundation on the new side of the kitchen/house started sinking. The squirrels still sat outside and laughed. I called an arborist once to cut down the trees and he tells me they're worth over $10K each, go figure, but that I could pull them both out and redo the entire lawn but the juglone would remain for at least a few years. Wretched trees, I tell you, Jim.