have red malabar spinach for peaches and cream and rosa bianca eggplant

Tomatoes that have proven themselves over the years: Celebrity (yield check and very dependable producer that does not become bland in my garden) Viva Italia (canning; to combine with Celebrity) Old German (the best tasting tomato I have ever tried and a real treat on a burger) Sweet Million (cause tasty cherry tomatoes beat carrot sticks for lunch by a long shot) Stupice (very early and a heat-setter in my garden, which methinks is a very unusual combination) Experimental tomatoes: Black from Tula Rio Grande (heat-setter paste) Dr. Carolyn Big Raspberry (looks so darn pretty) Mexico (same as Big Raspberry) Costoluto Genovese (same as Big Raspberry) Giant Belgium (got a free seed from the supplier) Solar Set (heat-setter) Solar Fire (heat-setter) Florida 91 (heat-setter) I'm planing close to 20 tomato bushes, which is twice what I usually grow, but 2009 was a very bad for tomatoes; production in the spring was only half of typical and fall season went bust despite regular pest control. This year I'm not planning on spring-season summer squashes; will grow squashes in a community garden that I'm organizing, but that's another long story. Peppers: proven over the years: Tolli's Sweet (the best tasting pepper ever) A few experimental bell pepper hybrids Eggplant: Rosa Bianca (I grew it in the past and it tasted great) Pingtung Long (it became bitter last year; want to know whether that was an anomaly) Antigua (new variety for testing and so darn beautiful) Watermelon: Orangeglo (prolific and very tasty) Melon: Noir des Carnes (very productive and tastes terrific; the best of French melons in my garden) Yard-Long beans: I don't remember the specific variety, but they extremely productive in the summer and they taste even better than bush beans. Sword beans: a friend introduced me to those and I'm amazed at tenderness of their pods Snake gourd: summer alternative to squash; I grew angled gourds this year and they tasted great, but preparation was fussy; I'm looking for something I don't have to peel, the lazy cook that I am.

we had the tomato tonight... FREAKIN' DELISH. i love tomatoes. this one had a nice balance, firm flesh, juicy but not drippy insides... and is probably the most beautiful tomato i've ever eaten. another dozen on the way. evelyn... read the post i've linked to below. what you see isn't electrical conduit -- it's the top runs for chain-link fence. i inherited a bunch from the old owner of my house. i've run out of that stuff, and now use 1/2 or 3/4 inch electrical conduit. it's VERY CHEAP (a couple bucks per 10' length) and you can find all the fittings inexpensively. you can build a a simple u-shaped trellis (think a soccer goal) for under $20. and to install it, i just pushed it 3 or 4 feet into the ground. the whole thing took less than 5 minutes to install. then use twine (in FLA, i think synthetic twine is best -- i use mason's twine) to hang the tomatoes. you can see how i've done it in the pictures. it's very very easy, and it keeps the plants open and off the ground. you can see that those plants weight a LOT (20 pounds or more). but my trellises never fail. oh, and i explain in the post my modified delta-charlie-inspired post-hole method. for the tomatoes this (cool) season, i filled the potholes (holes with pots?) with household compost for a couple of weeks in august, packed it down in september, topped it with a little finished compost, and planted my tomatoes in october. they are growing like nuts now, no fertilizer or nothing added. free tomatoes! oh, oh -- i forgot in my list: prodigious numbers of seminole squash, and so many eggplants (little fingers from TGS -- this plant is almost a year old now, and the fruits haven't reverted to brown yet! it's SO BEAUTIFUL too!) Here is a link that might be useful: growing tomatoes in FLA

Perry is super kind. I had lost all my tomato seed collection of ten years of growing to rodents and had posted on seed exchange for help. Perry replied to my request and offered me what varieties were available. I selected what I was trying to replace and we did an uneven trade. The envelope came fast, was well packed and there was more seed varieties than I asked for. Perry is a person that I would highly recommend and would trade with again anytime. Thank you for helping me out! Sonbie