The type of plant you have, the amount of water (whether natural rain or manual), and container type will make a big difference on the type of mix and how your plant responds in your environment. I think that sometimes we overthink it too much for a plant that is basically only going to be grown as an annual. People have posted great results for tomatoes growing in 5-gallon paint buckets, tires, actual bags of soil as the "container", rubbermaid totes, half whiskey barrels, fancy clay pots, plastic square pots, foam pots, etc., etc. The big thing to consider is your climate - ie., does it get brutally hot all season with little rain or does it fluctuate with hot periods and cooler periods with rain or does it stay cool all summer, etc.? Do you get lazy (or go away alot) during summer and can't water as often or do you baby your plants and try to water them every day whether they may need it or not (out of habit)? Do you get full blazing sun all day long or just morning sun or mainly afternoon sun? Are the plants sitting on concrete? Grass? Black asphalt? Gravel? Wood decking? Basically, over time, you would learn about your area's climate, the actual growing area's microclimate, as well as your natural watering practices, and would then adjust your mix and container type to best fit that. And as an FYI, my mother insists on getting bagged soil rather than a soiless mix and based on her yard, sun exposure, and her watering habits, her container tomatoes and peppers blow mine away by a longshot (she has a south-facing spot for her plants where mine are on a NE-facing covered balcony getting little or no overhead sun but full morning sun and a little in the afternoon in the corner where I position mine). It's the most remarkable thing to see but the whole debate about soil in containers seems to get thrown out after watching her container production year after year after year. Last year, she planted some 12" - 18" tall tomatoes and peppers in pure "Miracle Gro" vegetable and bedding soil (the kind you dump in a bed) at the end of May and by July, her plants looked like this: By August, they looked like this, sprawled all over (she moved her peppers to a different spot as some of the fruit were getting scalded): Apparently, the heavy wettish "soil" that she uses for her containers sitting in full blazing sun was kept in a sort of balance due to the tomato foliage helping to act as a shade over that soil to keep it from getting rock hard too quickly, and thus the soil's tendency to retain moisture helped the roots deal with the sun. So I just say, do some experimenting to see what works best because often things don't always pan out the way that would make any sense whatsover, but the environment and your care practices will be more the determining factor. ;-)

I don't know nuttin' about z8 gardening, but "Stupice" is my all-time fave tomato. The first year I tried it we had an unusually warm March (everyone was mowing their yards by the 3rd week - unheard of!). I optimistically jumped the gun and planted out tomatoes in raised beds the 1st week of April, and of course it turned cold and rainy (30s-50s). After a month of daily rain (but luckily no hard freezes) the gardens were practically marshes and the tomatoes looked as if they should be on life support. The weather didn't even out until the second week of May, and I was on the verge of deep-sixing the tomatoes, but decided to wait. Because of this I say don't give up on Stupice no matter how bad it looks - it's a warhorse and can rally when your weather turns! I did, eventually, end up pulling several of the Romas, beefsteaks (Mortage Lifter, I think), and all the Rutgers, which had completely rotted, but the Stupices produced the most perfect, beautiful tomatoes! I could go on & on about those things - I love'em. (It's kinda weird that your dog eats raw acorn squash, Trudi.) :~O

Using those things like shutterfly and flikr are crap. I always see nothing but 404's and errors from people who try to use those sites. A lot of people paste the URL of the web page, rather than the URL of the image, in the <img> tag. That generates broken images. I personally prefer to upload images to my own server (growyourtomatoes.com) so I have complete control over the images.

I heard that coffee grinds help to fertilize the soil and help to get rid of pests. So,I put coffee grounds on top of my soil of my tomato seedlings and they are turning an odd shade of light green and some of them have white spots on the leaves. Maybe after reading this artile I will try to scrape off the coffee grounds and then maybe integrate them into the soil later when I transplant the tomatoes into the garden if they are still alive I hope. P.S. Are there any ways to organically or naturally fertiize the soil for tomatoes? Some websites are talking about fish? You can't use tuna fish can you? Wouldn't that be salty?