Four o'clocks are highly invasive and I grow them anyway. As Scott noted, anything that wants to grow like mad in our weather conditions and that is low-maintenance is worth having. The great thing about four o'clocks is that they won't die on their own and you certainly cannot kill them. Mine mostly grow outside the fenced garden, and even the deer don't eat them. Neither do the voles. That gives me an idea. Maybe I should plant more 4 o'clocks closer to the garden fence to discourage voles from tunneling under the fence. I simply adore the scent of the four o'clock flowers at night, and will walk outside in the evening just to inhale the delicious aroma. Four o'clocks reseed vigorouslyly and the little four o'clock plants pop up in my garden a lot once the soil temperature reaches the right range. (It isn't there yet, but I saw daturas popping up yesterday, so the soil is getting prety warm.) I consider the time spent weeding out four o'clock seedlings to be a small price to pay for having an ocean of four o'clocks growing between my garden fence and the pecan tree in the front yard. It is an area that is generally too shady for grass, so the four o'clocks grow and spread like a gigantic ground cover. In our situation, they are the perfect plant for that spot and they are happy there, so they spread out and cover an increasingly larger area every year. I've often wondered if the large number of four o'clocks and daturas I have in and around the garden are why my tomato plants seldom have hornworms. Even when I have grown 300-600 tomato plants a year (in my earlier years here, when I was experimenting with many different varieties), I may see perhaps 4 to 8 tomato or tobacco hornworms in the garden a year, and some years I don't see any hornworm damage to tomato plants at all. You'd think that with a large number of tomato plants, there would be a large number of hornworms, but that's not the case here. In fact, both yesterday and the day before, I found a couple of the younger instar brown hornworms in the garden, and just shrugged. I don't know what the poor things will find to eat because there's nothing they like up and growing in the garden itself yet, and it is doubtful they'll find the tomato plants in their containers on the patio which is a long way for the hornworms to travel.

Thanks for the responses. Dave - I'm am pretty sure the neighbor across the street killed off his grass with some kind of herbicide, I haven't had a chance to ask him what he used. That's where I think it came from, the plants in the front row suffered the most damage. I thought maybe they would recover, but from now on I will probably pull plants with that much damage since they really never recover fully. It wasn't worth it to try to salvage them. As far as grafted plants go, I will be looking into them. Anything I can do improve my chances of success can't hurt. I know a lot of my plants didn't have that great of disease resistance, I now understand why some varieties just aren't suitable for my area. I had one Big Beef that was grafted, it was probably the healthiest and had the most tomatoes for beefsteaks. I just recently got a couple more, but they are in 15gal containers, I'll let you know how they turn out. Thanks Nandina - I know some varieties are more resistant to nematodes, I will probably find a couple to try out for my fall plantings. I also might see about a nematode soil assay to see if they are present. This was the first time this plot had been planted, so I had no way of truly knowing if they were present. One plant I pulled had some minor root damage, but compared to some pics I've seen it wasn't that bad. I've never really looked into the sugar thing, not sure I've even heard about it. I will possible try that out too. Thanks for the advice. Gorbelly - I went ahead and bagged some plant material to see if what happens, I'll let you know how it goes. I am familiar with Bill's bleach methods, I came across them last year while trying to figure out other issues that I've posted about. I might try that out as well and see what happens. I agree with you about being frustrating not knowing what is going on, I feel much better and okay with things as long as I know what happened. I'll probably write off the spring as a learning experience. I can't complain too much since I did get tomatoes, just not as many as I wanted. lol. Ncrealestateguy - I've looked at those diseases, and can see some of the symptoms possibly, but can't confirm. I know crop failures can happen and sometimes there is nothing you can do about it. It sucks when you put some work in and try your best to give them the best chance and BAM not this time, they just don't survive. I'll keep on trying and improving. I did have a small sample bad of actinovate, I used it at the downtown grow of mine. Not sure if it helped or not as the pack was expired by a couple months. I will keep that as an option though. Thanks Janice - I will try to experiment some more this fall. I'm trying to see what my top performers are, I don't keep a detailed log, more of just mental notes and chicken scratch. I'm hoping to change that too in the future. I have been watching the varieties you and everyone else have growing and will pick some from your winners. Thanks

Itsmce - hey whatever you gotta do to get the deed done! Isgen - that is a monster!!!! Is that a pink brandywine? Correct me if I'm wrong but I think it's the biggest we've seen on here this year (I might be wrong, did jack crack 2 lbs?) I have been working late all week so hadnt gotta to harvest in a while - so had a real nice haul tonight - big milestones were hit - up over 500 lbs total (523.36 to be exact but who's counting), and 300.08 lbs of tomatoes!!! Poblanos for days

Dave's Garden does a subscription, too. The advantage of a subscription service is that people want to get their money's worth; so, they probably participate more without any prodding. Spammers are less likely to pay money to subscribe, too. The monthly charge people see on their bank statements is a reminder and is advertising to the subscriber, too. It's not a horrible way to go (for wealthy enough individuals), exactly. But, I prefer not to have a monthly charge, or any charge, personally.