Thanks guys, no I did not supercrop. In fact, I did prune off the suckers ... later I found out that I should NOT have done that. It will severely hurt your yield they say. However, the plants are much bigger then the previous photos and are setting fruit quite nicely. Ill try to get some pics posted tonight. Also, my green pepper plants have sprouted, along with a pretty purple pepper plant, and a beefmaster indeterimante tomato plant. My basil is growing great, and I have been topping the basil which is in turn responding nicely and starting to grow "tops". My lettuce is like a wildfire as well .. fun stuff! Now that I got my newbie mistakes out of the way I think Im ready to rock on the next grow ;) I need to take a few clones of these totem hybrids though, I really like them. I think my next grow however, will be an INDETERMINANT cherry type tomato plant, and an indeterminant slicer variety as well, along with a few green peppers, lettuce, and spinach. Then I want to try a blueberry bush and some strawberries. I dont think the blueberries will be any problem but the strawberries are a different matter. In trying to find a continously producing line. The june bearers only fruit once a year, and then theres a seasonal variety that fruit twice a year.... neither will fit my requirements. I think I need to go with a day neutral variety to get a continous fuit production for the life of the plant??

Hi Bill, It is so nice to hear from you today. I hope y'all got some rain this week. We did! I agree with you that over-loving one's tomato plants is counter-productive because it gives you lots of watery, underflavored tomatoes. A term commonly used to refer to overwatering and overfeeding is "loving your plants to death". I am really careful about not overwatering (which, considering our droughts here, is not that hard as long as I don't turn on the soaker hoses too often) and not overfeeding. I've also noticed that plants that are overfed and overwatered have incredible pest problems and more disease issues as well. Bill, my absolute worst tomato year ever in my whole life was here in southern OK in 2004. I remember that I got the plants into mostly raised beds (two rows were at grade level in only slightly amended soil) with well-amended soil and I got them planted pretty early. By the end of May I had nice, tall sturdy plants covered with ripening fruit. In June, 12" of rain fell. Twelve inches. That was the end of what had seemed to be a promising tomato year. All the tomatoes had poor flavor and texture and most were spitters. I hope we never have 12" of rain in one month again during tomato growing season. The rain finally stopped falling sometime in July, but I didn't have tomatoes with good flavor until late August or early September. The next two years were drought years also plagued by wildfire, and in 2005 and 2006 we had really, really good-flavored tomatoes and a pretty decent harvest considering the drought and heat. For us, as for most of OK, 2007's spring and early summer was excessively wet and the tomatoes were late and poorly-flavored. Once again the rain stopped in July, and we got decently flavored tomatoes a month or so later. Last year's drought gave us tomatoes with great flavor, even after I completely stopped watering the garden when the water bills became unbearably high. So, I don't really want to "hope for drought", but it does give us our best-flavored tomatoes (and our hottest peppers too). Even though we had over an inch of rain this week here (1.7" to be exact), that only brings 2009's rainfall up to about 50% of normal, and the drought is forecast to persist or improve only slightly, so I am expecting a good tomato year here. This year I am going to grow about 30 plants in containers so I can control the moisure a little more for them than I can for in-the-ground plantings. I can't wait to see how you like SunGold. The only people I've ever known who didn't like SunGold were, perhaps, picking them too early or maybe overwatering them. You have to let them get a deep golden-orange. Sadly, the SunGolds split pretty easily and don't hold for a long time after being harvested which is why you don't see them for sale often in grocery stores or farmer's markets. If you like SunGold, though, and want to grow it to sell, there is a very similar improved variety called SunSugar that doesn't crack and holds for a longer period of time. The flavor of SunSugar (at least to my tastebuds) is identical to the flavor of SunGold. I get the best tomatoes when I give them only organic tomato food that is low in the necessary macronutrients. I like Espoma Tomato Tone which is a 4-7-10. (For anyone newer to gardening, that's 4% nitogen, 7% phosphate, and 10% potash.) What I really like about it is that it contains all the micronutrients tomatoes need: calcium, magnesium, sulfur, boron, chlorine, cobalt, copper, iron, manganese, molybdenum, sodium, and zinc. I give each plant a handful of Tomato Tone at planting time and then I don't necessarily feed them again unless they are showing signs of nutritional deficiency. I don't water any more often than I have to in order to get the plants to a decent size by the time flowering begins, and I water as little as possible once they are setting fruit, especially as fruit begins to ripen. I like to describe the effect of stress on tomato plants to new gardeners this way: The purpose of a tomato plant is to produce seeds to perpetuate itself. If the plant is living a cushy life and is not in danger of dying, it doesn't get in a big hurry to make seeds and, if it is an indeterminate tomato, it just keeps getting bigger and bigger. Why shouldn't it? The plant, after all, is living the good life and has reason to think that life will end any time soon. On the other hand, if a tomato plant is a little dry, a little hot, and a little thirsty and hungry, it tends to produce more seed, and earlier, because it is hurrying up to make seed to replace itself in case it dies. So, stress (up to a point) is good since it gives us more seeds (inside our fruit). For most of us here in Oklahoma, it isn't too hard to see to it that our plants get the stress they need--Mother Nature sort of takes care of that for us! LOL Dawn

There are all kinds of tomatoes that do well in hot, dry weather, but they need to be planted pretty early in the year so they can be big, healthy, blooming and setting fruit before the massively hot weather arrives. First, avoid all the really large-fruited tomatoes. The larger the fruits, the fewer fruit you get per plant and the fewer you get in hot weather. So, smaller fruit--those in the 6 oz. to 10/12 oz. range will give you more pounds of fruit per plant than plants that produce fruit weighing one pound each or more. Secondly, and this is especially true if you are a market grower, you need to have a mix of determinates and indeterminates. Determinates are bush-type plants that produce a heavier crop all at once so you'll get a lot of fruit before the worst heat arrives. Indeterminates are taller and more vining and as long as they are actively growing they'll keep getting taller and blooming and setting more fruit (within certain temperature limits). Third, all of the tomato plants that set very small fruit (currant, cherry, pear and plum-shaped types that are bite-sized are maybe two-bite-sized) produce in spite of the heat. Some plants that produce slightly larger fruit (1-4 oz. or thereabouts) also set very well in the heat. Fourth, the best-producing plants do not necessarily produce the best-tasting fruit, so keep that in mind when you make your choices. If excellent flavor is the most important thing to you, you may have to settle for smaller yields. If very good to good flavor is acceptable, you can grow many more varieties and get larger harvests. Fifth, if tomato spotted wilt virus is an issue for you, then the ONLY plants that you have a chance of success with is those that have inborn resistance to TSWV or those which have been bred to have resistance to TSWV. As far as I know, no varieties are completely immune to it though. Sixth, most of us who are avid tomato growers plant at least two rounds of plants--one round planted in the March-April time frame for tomatoes in May through July and sometimes August. The second round is referred to as fall tomatoes and can be planted in June or July (and, from my point of view, June is better than July) so you'll get fruit to ripen ahead of freezing fall/winter weather. I plant fall tomatoes in separate beds so they are getting started while the summer ones are still producing. Now, here's some lists: Small-Fruited Varieties That Produce All Summer Long: CHERRY TYPES: Black Cherry Sun Gold SunSugar FT (an improved SunGold type with less cracking) Sweet Million Supersweet 100 Sun Cherry (a red-fruited version of SunGold) Large Red Cherry Riesentraube Husky Red Cherry Isis Candy Peacevine Sugary Juliet Chadwick's Cherry Jolly Snow White Sweet Baby Girl Sugar Lump (aka Gardener's Delight) Golden Gem (golden yellow cherry) Sweet Chelsea (very large cherry types, very disease resistant) Tommy Toe GRAPE TYPES: Sprite (determinate type with red fruit) Grape (red fruit) Rosalita (pink fruit) Cuban Yellow Grape Golden Sweet Ildi (yellow fruited) Elfin (detminate type with red fruit) Green Grape CURRANT TYPES: These produce small, currant-sized tomatoes, in huge quantities on plants that often get very, very large. For example, last year, my Tess's Land Race Currant plants were about 9' tall and 4' to 5' wide so these require a lot of space, but produce thousands of fruit per plant. It takes a lot of effort to keep them picked. Tess's Land Race Currant Sara's Galapagos Red Currant Yellow Currant Coyote (fruit are ivory to pale yellow) PLUM/PASTE TYPES: Martino's Roma Opalka Polish Linguisa LaRoma VeeRoma Rio Grande Viva Italia Black Plum SMALL TOMATOES: (1 TO 4 OZ.): Porter Porter Improved/Porter's Pride Pink Ping Pong Yellow Pink Pong Jaune Flammee' Livingston's Gold Ball/Gold Ball Lime Green Salad Fourth of July Bloody Butcher Super Boy MEDIUM-SIZED FRUIT: Druzba Arkansas Traveler Celebrity Merced (no longer available, unless your local wholesaler stockpiled seed before it was discontinued, which a few growers did) Better Bush Bush Early Girl (more productive for me than Early Girl) Homestead 24 Sioux Super Sioux Mountain Princess Rutger's LARGE-FRUITED TOMATOES: (Note: This are large-fruited in comparison to the previously-listed plants but they would not be considered all that large in parts of the country with milder climates where very large tomatoes are easy to grow. They are large for our climate.) Better Boy Big Boy (has produced heavy yields for me here in southern OK even in hot weather--not sure if it would do the same in NW OK) New Big Dwarf Momotaro True Black Brandywine Indian Stripe or Cherokee Purple (IS is more productive for me than CP) Black Krim or Black from Tula Aunt Ruby's German Green Cherokee Green Nebraska Wedding Persimmon Primetime Supersonic Ramapo Mule Team TOMATOES BRED TO PRODUCE IN HOT WEATHER: Sunmaster VFFA Tropic Sun King VFTA Shady Lady (very popular in California because heavy foliage helps prevent sunscald of the fruit) Solar Fire VFF Solar Set VFF Heat Wave II (not sure if it is still on the market) BRED FOR RESISTANCE TO TOMATO SPOTTED WILT VIRUS: Crista BHN 444 VFF BHN 589 VFF BHN 640 VFFF Amelia Red Defender Mountain Glory BRED FOR RESISTANCE TO TOMATO YELLOW LEAF CURL VIRUS: SecuriTY In our worst August heat, even many of those bred for heat will slow down. You can keep them in production by shading them with 30% shade cloth and by misting them once or twice a day and by thumping their blossoms early in the morning when the plants and pollen are cooler from nighttime temps. Dawn

I used the Menard's 54" heavy duty cages which look to be as strong or stronger than the ones you are using. Since my EarthTainers sit close to my yard I simply stuck the cages into the containers and drove a 2" x 2" x 8' wooden stake 12" into the ground right next to the tainers and the cages. I tied the cages off to the 8' stake very tight and that was it. As one of the other posters stated, the weight of the EarthTainers is well over 100lbs, so I wasn't worried about the containers going anywhere. As for proof of how sturdy the whole set-up would be in a strong wind, I have the proof. About 3 weeks ago a very strong storm that spawned a CAT 3 tornado touched down about 2 miles from my house. Winds were so strong in my neighborhood that the top third of a tree was blown off in one neighbors yard. And the other neighbor had a few very large branches blown off of his trees. While I also had some branches blown off, my EarthTainers never moved and the cages are still strapped to the stakes as tight as the day I built them. Wind gusts were said to be at least +60mph.