As if today's heat wasn't bad enough, we got a storm this afternoon. I haven't heard if there was actually a tornado but definitely some insane winds. I watered everything, went to pick my kids up from grandma's and when I got home, there were rose petals glued to my front door from across the street! The little cucumber that I had finally gotten around to putting on a trellis 2 days ago had blown over, one of the pepper pots tipped over, and one of the pepper plants just snapped in half. I strung up 30 little green Cayennes to dry but I don't really know. Some of them were JUST starting to turn red, some really seem like babies. If I dry them and crush them green, will they still have good flavor? Oh and the corn was COMPLETELY flattened. After scouring the garage, we went straight to Lowe's to find some way to support the corn for under $7 which is how much money I have to hold me over till my next paycheck. Got a 25 pack of 4' bamboo stakes and a ball of twine and made a little fence around that bucket. It's all pretty well standing back up now but we'll see whether it's really ok and how it holds up to the next windstorm. I know one thing...I'm definitely going to quit bragging about how well everything's doing! Maybe I should just keep my mouth shut till the season's over! @JonPalmer - I planted pretty much everything the last week in May or first week in June. Most of it is in half Miracle Gro potting mix and half Black Kow. The first few things I planted are just the MG potting mix. I've been using the MG sprayer thing about every 5-7 days or so (when I have it and think about it basically). I'm just tickled with how well it's all growing in spite of everything!

Here is a new twist on tomatos and copper wire. You will need somekind of cage to try this. The cage of course goes around your tomato plant to protect it from dogs, cats, ect. from stepping on young plants and then also act as a support to keep the plant of the ground. Now, here is my new experiment - Use a piece of single stranded, uninsulated wire - several feet, yards, long. I,m using #12 wire. Push one end of wire into soil at base of your cage . About 10 inches into soil, it needs to always be in moist ground so it it able to conduct a small current. Then wrap the wire aroun the outside of the metal,steel, cage in a coil. I,m attaching it with insulated bread ties. After several winds, I'm trying 12 , cut your copperwire and point about 12 inches straight up towards the heavens to act as an antenna. Read somewhere this will deter tomato worms. Wouldn't that be a blessing! Will let you know more latter. One neighbor says all I'm doing is making miniture lighting rods and I'll probably end up with green fried tomatos in the back yard :)

I am in southern CT zone 6b here, and I am just about in the same boat with rocklandguy. My plants are nestled into trays inside a coldframe setup on my slate patio. I ventilate during the daytime to prevent excessive heat buildup and to allow some gentle breezes onto the plants, and I close it up overnight. It has been deceivingly warm here this past week or so, and like rockland guy I am tempted to sneak an "experiment" plant or two into the tomato beds just to see if it will make it to May 10 or 11 when I usually plant. When you have extra plants you may as well! I would say mine are pretty decently hardened off now due to having been incubated on my unheated porch etc. Nighttime temps are in the 40s reliably now, so I think we are in good shape unless we get snow or a freeze, which could happen. I would say we all have our fingers on the trigger here in zone 6, just waiting for the moment but being cautious at the same time.

What I'm now wondering is whether home-grafted tomatoes that use a rootstock that's tolerant of blights would be worthwhile. So, of course, you'd have to know which ones are! **** The word blight is totally non-specific as you know. ( wink) Almost everyone in this thread is talking about foliage diseases as far as I can tell and with two exceptions that I know of, both commercial varieties and with minimal EB tolerance, there are no tolerant varieties out there in terms of known varieties that everyone agrees on as to Foliage disease tolerance.Ja, I said everyone or at least several to many folks having the same experience which is difficult to determine. I think it's good to remember that the fungal spores and the bacteria that can cause foliage diseases are egalitarians at heart and will land on the foliage of ANY variety without respect to race, religion or political affiliation. LOL And no two seasona are the same in terms of the presence of those foliage pathogens in air, rain or dust. A person may grow a variety for one season and note that it's either tolerant or not to this or that foliage disease, but that's just one season. If the same variety is grown for many seasons and other varieties are coming down with this and that, then that's much more meaningful, as pennyrile noted above with his Indian Stripe selection. Anney, I can't see doing any grafting to help prevent foliage diseases. maybe some systemic diseases depending on what the problem is every year in a certain area with systemic diseases, and depending on the specific root stock seeds that are purchased, which aren't cheap, mind you, b'c it just wouldn't help b'c the foliage is still out there and susceptible to the bad guy spores and bacteria that drop in for a visit from time to time from season to season or in any one season. About the only observation I have made is that PL varieties, for me, are more tolerant of both fungal and bacterial foliage diseases. Near the end of the season my RL's may be struggling but the PL's almost always do much better. And with the non-stop rain and cool weather where I grow my tomatoes here in the NE it's looking like I may not get much fruit production at all. Here it is almost August and no blossoms, no fruit set yet. They couldn't go out earlier b'c we had two frost in June/ And then there's the Late Blight issue to be faced as well here in the NE. Quadruple Sigh. Carolyn