Yeah! 36 for zone 7 at least that is my zone on Garden Webs info. I'm so glad I saved many of my jugs from last year. I can sow much faster without having to cut and make holes. Yeah!

Please add 25 more........zone 9.......more to come! Thanks!!! Annie

Is that 8 a.m. Eastern Standard time or my time Central Standard? If CST please add 39 more for z:4 Thanks for all your work on this count, Seedmama.

So it was stable, until it wasn't stable, for the reason I just gave. I win. LOL That stealthy lubadub seems to have gone *poof*, I'd consult with him before even conceding Love-15 since he is more fun than me LOL! I think in order to judge the merits of "Big Zac F1" as a cultivar; we need to compare opinions on what constitutes a cultivar. It can be subjective and perhaps with heirlooms much more so, but now we are asking about traits that result from inbred parent lines. That the seeds were an F1 cross certainly is reasonable acknowledgment. However, anecdotal reports of “Minnie’s friends” are not sufficient proof IMO, that Big Zac F1 ever was a hybrid cultivar. To know that for sure, IMHO, we would have to have a record of the breeding of both parents to form stable inbred parent lines such that when crossed they always gave a vigorous seed and always had the same combination of characteristics to clearly define the seed plant characteristics every time in terms of its characteristics not limited to consistent fused blossoming and vigor. Porterhouse is probably a good example of a hybrid in this sense. If you mean to say that our heronie Ms. Zaccaria worked on both parent lines and Big Zac F1 was not drifting this or that way then I'll readily concede in straight sets. I vaguely recall as an armchair blabbing analyst who was off somewhere in the tropical jungles when this whole thing went down, a somewhat different version: That she simply crossed two heirlooms and used that as her F1 and little by little improved it, which I assume was via the parent lines. I would need more than a a few friends waving their arms calling this a quality F1 hybrid that always performed "the same" There is a limit to how much "in-variety genetic diversity" there can be, and everything may not be recognized as a cull when this is done in a home garden. At some point you need to say the genetic diversity did not justify calling it a stable F1 hybrid, and you are just dealing with a cross. Dealing with a cross is great, but the decision to name a variety is subjective and I'm sure plenty of varieties have been named that had parents that later were show not to breed true. The scandal of losing a parent to me is highly suspicious and the loss is hearsay which may or may not be relevant or true. To be honest, after watching the passion with which giant tomato growers behold their seeds like Smeagol's "My Precious", given the nature of the egos in the competition, my only conclusion is that Big Zac F1 was simply a cross between two heirloom lines which had a higher frequency of expression of fused blossoms. I wonder if it is more accurate that Ms. Zaccaria discovered and should be credited with a higher frequency of fused blossoms, possibly a mutation, possibly not, which was still quite variable and requires significant resources to achieve the heterosis and uniformity a quality hybrid needs to give. New breeding has probably advanced BZ (OP) well beyond the F1 from what we are seeing, and they still do not consider it stable (Unless the F* from Monsieur Boudyo has reached that point for a single specific trait). I may have different thinking, since I also believe if the mutation is fixed and a consistent tomato producing multiple fruits is bred, that the new stable cultivar should be the beginning of as new subspecies at minimum recognized as different as broccoli is from cauliflower. Perhaps when my great heirloom book arrives in the Male (smile), I’ll have a better understanding of hybrids ;-), but these are my thoughts as all-wet as they might be. PC who really wants to ask a question about the systemic or not characteristics of initial Leaf Mold (whimper, frown) when I get up the guts to start another thread. and also subscribes to the academy of "it isn't how big it is but how well it eats" though still finding this fascinating in other people's gardens. This post was edited by PupillaCharites on Sat, Aug 30, 14 at 14:25