Heehee! I know about the "tomato lists". But, we all have good intentions. It's just hard not to make them "gooder"..... Today, I noticed the currants are starting to really turn, so not much longer for them. Also, the Burpee Super Beefsteak and Rutgers are turning as well. The cherries are a bit behind (Black and Supersweet 100), so I don't know what's gonna happen with them. Whatever, I have decided to just harvest what I can when we get a freeze warning, which, as you say, could be any day now. The fall tomatos were just so gorgeous, and much nicer than the spring ones. But, I only started out with the Rutgers and Jet Star (it bit the dust in August), and a later planting in May of the Supersweet 100. By that time, it was too late for the Supersweet 100 to really set many tomatos - the heat was on. The fall planting I did in July did great and those are the ones that look soooo good right now. I'm happy with the container soil I've mixed, the fertilizer I used - I will increase how often I fertilizer next year. Happy with the watering I did - not overwatering cuz I do have a heavy hand in general. Happy with the containers I use, but do intend to purchase some grow bags in 20 gallon size, but will still keep to 8 (okay, okay, maybe 9 or 10) plants. I've really enjoyed growing tomatos much more than I thought I ever would, with an eye toward growing them for me, anyways, and not the hornworms. Altho the hornworms still have their place in the garden, it's just on the Datura now and not the tomatoes, so we're all happy. I did grow pots of basil around the plants, and it did seem to help with some of the pests. The grasshoppers did not touch the tomatoes, no white flies, no flying anything except for the happy little honeybees, bumble bees and skippers, that loved the Basil blooms. Did have some problems with the beet armyworms and the tomato fruitworms, but they remained manageable by handpicking and damaged only very few fruits. All in all, container growing worked out very well for me and I look forward to next year's growing season. Susan

Ilene, You can root it in water, but it roots just fine in soil. Plants that root in water develop differently from those rooted in soil, so if you root it in water first, then it has to adjust all over again when moved to soil. So, you might as well start it in soil. Gamebird, It doesn't necessarily sound like you did anything wrong. Just take 2-3" tip cuttings and remove the leaves from the bottom inch of the cutting. If you have/use a rooting hormone, dip the tips of the cutting in the rooting hormone and then insert them into a pot or flat of sterile potting soil. Keep them moist but not soggy and they should root in 2-4 weeks. If you can, keep them in a fairly warm area--around 60 to 70 degrees because they are less likely to root in very warm or very cool conditions. They're usually slower to root at this time of year than they are in late spring or early summer. I don't know what happened with your previous effort. If you do a lot of cuttings, don't crowd them too closely together. Don't keep the cuttings too wet (or too dry!) and don't tug on them to see if they are ready. Tugging just breaks off any fine root hairs that might have been forming. Once they're about 4 weeks old (at this time of year, in late spring it might be just 2 weeks old), dig gently around one and see if you see roots. You can grow them on the flat another 2-4 weeks. Once they're 6-8 weeks old, you can transfer them to individual pots or paper cups and grow them on there. Dawn

Hi Daniel. Wishing you an early spring . Up here in PNW, it is kinda "Springy". Highs ~ 50F. And of course we have not seen any snow, high winds .. what so ever. November was our coldest month so far, temps dropping to low 20s. But then we get a looottt of drizzling rain. Off Topic a bit: On the tomatoes: I will start my seeds around late Feb. BTW. I got Brandy Boy seeds. So watch out. hehe. We'll see how it does in my garden. Seysonn

Leava, Yes, of course we are lunatics. A person would have to be a lunatic to try to garden here amidst the constant droughts, interspersed with flooding, and then not to mention hailstones constantly falling in Spring and early summer, tornadoes, severe T-storms, microbursts, blue northers, strong straightline winds, raging wildfires, ice storms, etc. So, lunatics we are. Gardening lunatics. Let's wear the title proudly! When we moved here, if someone had told me we'd see 90 days with no rainfall to speak of, or at the other end of the spectrum over 12" of rainfall in one day (more than once, in fact), would it have deterred me from moving here with the intention of having a big garden? Not at all. Gardeners just have to garden no matter where they are. TexasRanger, I bet they thought you were a troll at first. Gardening here is a whole different world. Let's use Fine Gardening magazine as an example. They always have such lovely photo spreads, but I look at them and mostly sigh and say "that would never look like that here, even if it would grow here, which it won't". (I will say they feature natives more frequently now than they did 10 or more years ago.) It is hard to accept that we cannot just grow whatever we want to grow here, but I've learned some hard lessons and have shifted to plants that tolerate the conditions we have here. I don't have time or resources to expend on plants that need lots of extra attention in order to have even a chance of surviving here. Amy, I agree. I just didn't want for anyone to think that you meant their seeds wouldn't grow here. Instructions? There's instructions? Heck, I ignore those instructions, always assuming they are geared to a climate that's not ours. I freely admit I do not read seed packet instructions. That's doubly true with cool-season seeds that have to be planted in winter here, and that is not always clear because for some of those northern seed companies, the cool-season flower grow and bloom all summer. Ha! As if that would happen here. In the 1980s I quickly learned not to trust gardening magazines or seed catalogs because they would show lovely things like delphiniums and snapdragons as summer plants. Well, maybe they are summer plants somewhere, but not here. That's one reason I try to avoid most nurseries early in Spring. They often have beautiful perennials in full bloom for sale, but once you get them home here and plant them, they're already peaking and going to decline quickly as we heat up. Mother Nature in Oklahoma is a hard taskmaster. dbarron, My closest local gardening friend, Fred, gardens a little less than a mile from me, but we are in a creek hollow that's much more low-lying than his place up on a ridge. He can easily plant 2-4 weeks before we can and give no thought to protecting his plants from cold nights, and he likes to give me hell (in a friendly way) because I haven't planted yet. If I planted when he planted, it all most likely would freeze. Sometimes I cannot believe the difference between his place and ours. Along the same line of thinking, we have gardening friends 2 or 3 miles north of us and they can not and will not plant warm-season crops as early as I do. In their case, they are more exposed to cold winter wind and haven't found any upside (and many downsides) to planting as early as I do. So, we all have our own routines that work for us in our specific spots, even though we're all not very far apart at all. I also know someone who used to garden in 3 different spots within a few miles of each other, and he had different planting times for each place. I cannot imagine how great the differences would be 20 miles away considering how great they are in a much smaller distance. Microclimate is everything, and I don't think I truly realized that when we first moved here in 1999, but Mother Nature taught me quickly. Dawn