RE: [tomato] Beautiful Pix

margaret lauterbach (Tomato@GlobalGarden.com)
Thu, 08 Jul 1999 07:20:51 -0600 

At 04:02 PM 7/7/99 -0400, you wrote:
>Hi Margaret,
>"Druzba" has always been relatively crack free for me, too.  I would
>consider "Druzba" to be one of the foremost all round tomato varieties. 
>The problem with making lists is that there must always be a "last one."
><G>  I could have included "Burbank" which is another super variety.
>
Burbank grows great for me, too, and is excellently flavored. Chuck, I grew
Black from Tula last year and did some tomato canning. I didn't notice at
first that the interior of Black from Tula is nasty-looking, but some went
into my regular canning anyway. I'm sure it looks spoiled. I wasn't as
taken with the flavor of that as Catharine Vinson was. I prefer Black Krim,
and that doesn't have a brown-black interior.

>How are you feeling?  The heat is about to get me.  This may be the year
>when I start to slow down.  188 'maters is getting to be too much.  I was
>intending to slow down this year but Carolyn sent me a bunch of seeds that
>were of varieties for her book that I wasn't yet growing.....so....  As we
>speak I have all of her varieties either in the garden or in the seed
>vials.

Our 100 degree weather is supposed to start next week. The house is air
conditioned, though, and our humidity is low, so I don't expect problems. I
was surprised that Dr. Male thought potato-leafed varieties were more
disease resistant than regular leafed. I'm sure she's referring to blight
since she has no experience with curly top virus. That's an equal
opportunity destroyer, I think, but I should pay closer attention to that.
We seldom get the blights here, and I haven't had fusarium or verticillium
in that part of the garden.
>
>I saw a trick that impressed me today.  We usually experience cooler
>weather during the first two or three weeks of May with a frost free date
>of May 1st. Connie Newton got some plants from me and put them in the same
>concrete reinforcement wire cages that I use but put a foot high strip of
>roofing felt around bottoms of the cages.  The plants so grown are
>definitely ahead of the others.

What's that made of in case a little would disintegrate in the garden? It
would also protect seedlings from strong breezes, and that would be a plus
in my book.

>
>Chuck
>
Margaret