OK, I dug out my Romeo seeds. Most I had were destroyed when a portion of my seed collection got wet. I do have some that look OK, not many. It’s a good thing @Antmary is growing them too. Just in case these are bad, but I think they are fine. I can send about 10 seeds each.
@wildscaper
@IowaJer
@subdood_ky_z6b
Please PM me your address and I’ll get these out now if about 10 seeds is OK? I could do a few more if needed.
Yes sir keep me in mind if you can! Will pay you whatever you need. I’ll look around and see if anyone has these. Thanks Drew!
Just sent you the last message at the same time hahahaha! Ten seeds will be great. PM is on the way sir.
Drew
I don’t need anything, I may ask for something in the future, so I’ll take a raincheck. Only costs a stamp, so no big deal!
I’ll report back about Romeo and I’ll save seeds for the next season in case somebody want to grow them.
Well, my tomato seedlings are doing great since I gave them some Medina liquid fert. Their leaves are a deep green, they have some fuzz on them, they’ve put on some vertical growth, and they have that unique tomater smell to them now. My wife likes the smell, but to me they almost have a stinky feet odor to them.
That fert is powerful, I only used 3tsp (1/2oz) per gallon of water. Turns into a nice dark brown mixture. I bought it in TX before we moved up here. I wish I’d used it in past seasons, but forgot I had it. I don’t know if it’s sold outside TX, but here is a link for it:
http://www.organicgardeningshop.com/Medina-Hasta-Gro-Plant-Food-Gal-.html
Looks like Amazon sells it, among other sites as well.
I’d like to get them in the ground next week as they’re getting almost too big. So, today I started hardening them off. I let them sit out in the shade and no wind for about 5 hours, and they seem OK. So, over the next few days they’ll get more exposure. If the rain can hold off a bit tomorrow, I’ll prob till the tom/pepper plot. The strawberry and corn patch that got rutted out by Saturday’s flash flood will also need to be re-tilled.
A local tomato guy around my area mentions a variant of San Marzano on his website called San Marzano Redorta Select. Maybe it does better in some locations than the original.
His quote:
"San Marzano Redorta Select
So much better than the standard San Marzano. The San Marzano Redorta tomatoes are big, fat and delicious. I’ve never seen a paste tomato that tastes this good!
Vigorous plant produces lots of 10-12 ounce plum tomatoes with intense flavor."
Seeds From Italy sells them. I found them just as hard to grow. They also carry San Marzano 2. Great company, I have grown most of the tomatoes from the Franchi seed company, one of the oldest seed companies around, I think founded around 1875. The same family still runs it!!
http://growitalian.com/
Well, I’ve been hardening off our indoor tomato seedlings the last couple days, today they got about 6 hours of partial shade on a mostly cloudy day. It’s supposed to rain most of tomorrow so guess they’ll go under the deck.
I tilled the tomato/pepper and cucumber plots today. The soil’s still a bit damp in some places, so I couldn’t do two runs in some of them without the tiller burying itself in mud. We got another half inch of rain this evening in about half an hour. They look OK, hope to get the mater’s in the ground next week.
Here’s some pics of the tom’s outside. They look quite lush and tall now that they’ve had a bit of liquid fert.
That’s 44 tom’s and 2 peppers, and there’s 21 more peppers in the house under lights now.
My tomatoes aren’t happy with the weather, which is too chilly for their liking, but at least they’ve lost the purple/yellow leaves now that they’re out.
I see incipient flower buds on the early ones
Picked my 1st vine ripened early tomato today. (I had one last week but it had fallen off the vine and it ripened on the window sill, so that doesn’t count. 
) Having some new challenges with white fly and aphids and the normal challenges with blight. These are heirloom.
Congratulations, hope you enjoy it.
Well, after being inundated over the last couple weeks, I was finally able to get some of the tomatoes put in the ground this weekend. They had got quite leggy since I started hardening them off over the last couple weeks. So I ended up stripping off a lot of the lower sprigs, and burying them deep.
I have 45 tom plants, but got 22 transplanted. The rest will be put in the ground prob Tuesday, as it’s supposed to rain overnight and tomorrow. We also have about 25 pepper plants that need to be planted as well.
Here’s what was put in the ground:
Red Calabash (3)
Watermelon (3)
Abe Lincoln (3)
Orange KY Beefsteak (2)
Pineapple (2)
De Barao (2)
Russian Queen (2)
Paul Robeson (2)
Gordost Sibiri (1)
Girl Girl’s Weird Thing (1)
Chocolate Cherry (1)
Gave them a good watering, and put down some tack straw mulch. It was hot work this weekend, it was in the upper 80s and virtually no wind. My arms got ate up by some unseen flies as it closer to dusk. It was maddening, so today I wore a long sleeve shirt and pants, and didn’t get hit as bad. Thankfully it’s supposed to cool off a bit later this week. We also hope to get our corn, beans, cukes, okra, peas, etc planted this week.
Because of off an on showers today, I only had time to get a couple more tom’s planted. We had a bit of rain today, and 3 or 4 of the plants were laid over some. I kinda expected that to happen. I piled up some wet dirt around their bases and hopefully they’ll be OK. I’m glad I got the mulch down beforehand, or they’d be laying in wet dirt.
I prob should have planted them trench style, considering how leggy they are. But I did bury the root ball about a foot deep, so that should help some.
Nice day tomorrow, so hope to get 'em all planted then, plus no rain forecast the rest of the week. I’ll try to get some pics of everything when I’m done.
For protection, I put up my fishing line fence to protect from deer. We’ll see how that works out, it did pretty well last year.
Well, today I finished with the mater’s. I got 16 planted, it took me just about all day, longer than I thought. Started at about 1pm and finished at abt 7:00, with an hour break. I guess it took longer because most of the plants were over a foot tall and contorted. So, I had to dig deep holes and pile lots of dirt on them. Some had to be laid over they were so twisted. They all got watered and mulched, which I actually ran out of.
Here’s what got planted, plus two from yesterday.
Siberian Pink Honey (3)
Gordost Sibiri (2)
Indian Stripe (2)
Red Beefsteak (2)
Striped Roman (2)
Cream Sausage (2)
Jaune Flamme (2)
Chocolate Cherry (1)
Orange KY Beefsteak (1)
GG Weird Thing (1)
That’s a total of 40 tomato plants. Tomorrow it’ll be 3 more tom’s, and 16 peppers. I’m hardening off another 22 peppers, they’ll go in the ground later this week.
You’ve been busy 'Dood! The good news is it seems Toms like being planted really deep - I know mine like being planted really deep a whole lot better than I like digging really deep!
I planted 20 tomatoes and that’s WAY more than I want, or need. I can’t imagine 40, and if I recall you even cut back some this year! Do you sell them, or just supply friends and family?
I’ll probably never plant this many ever again - I just did it because I let my enthusiasm over some new seeds get the best of me, and once my seed tray’s got going I just had to plant multiples of the seeds I’d gotten in.
But normally I have more than enough with about 8 plants including a couple cherry toms.
Mother nature just kinda dealt you a bad hand this year - making for a late start!
Hope it all comes out in the wash (no pun intended…)
Heh, yeah I really cut back this year! 
Don’t know how we’ll manage with just 43 tom plants! Yes, I did 70 last year, totally ridiculous, I was like you, I went loco with all the new heirloom seeds I got. I just had to try at least one plant, or two per variety. We also did about 30 pepper plants.
No, we didn’t sell any, we might have given some away. But, as mentioned in last year’s thread of the same name, it was kind of a bust. A lot of the plants got diseased, and then the fruit got sun scalded because of the lack of foliage. Plus, we had bad blossom end rot on some of our Roma type tom’s.
There were some stand outs, but frankly there maybe were 25 plants that we didn’t get a good sampling of because of all the problems. Oh, and I didn’t fertilize enough, and the weeds got out of control. The fruit on a lot of the plants just tasted off, I think because of lack of nutrients, and maybe too much rain.
The varieties that we grew but didn’t get a good sampling of were Black Trifele, Black Brandywine, Lemon Oxheart, Mr Stripey, Costoluto Fiorentino, Korol Sibiri, German Johnson, Great White, Aunt Ruby’s German Green, and so on. Really disappointing.
We did can a lot 'mater’s and veggie soup, and made about a dozen pints of salsa with them and the peppers, but frankly, we could’ve done sooo much better. We grow the food to enjoy fresh, but our main reason is for food storage.
Even the peppers did poorly, except the Pepperoncini, Serrano and Red Marconi. We couldn’t even get simple banana and Jalapeño’s to do well.
I’m chalking it up to nutrient poor soil, too much rain, and late negligence on my part.This year the plants are in much better soil, I amended all our plots after getting a soil test report. Had to use a lot of lime, about 700lb worth on five plots! I also hope to be more diligent about weeding and fertilizing.
We grew less peppers last year, about 30 compared to about 40 this year. I hope to get all those planted by next week. Yes, the weather’s been very uncooperative, but what can you do. It used to make me furious, but that’s just a waste of energy. I don’t know how farmers can stand it, they are obviously so dependent on the weather.
While I was finishing up on the ‘mater’s, Mrs Dood planted corn and beans today. We’re growing Honey Select, Silver Queen, and Iochief sweet corn, and she planted a short row of Strawberry and Japanese Hulless popcorn. For the beans she did a long row (abt 50’ each) of white half-runners, and Rattlesnake pole beans, and a partial row of striped half-runners, and a few Top Crop beans.
Since I have a bunch of 5ft T-posts that aren’t being used, I’m going to use those to make a trellis for the pole beans. We have planted beans with the corn in the past, but it’s been a big gom, so this year they will get trellised on their own rows.
Here’s hoping for a bumper crop this year!
Tomatoes here are starting to flower, tho they still look kinda spindly - at least they’re the right color now, being outside. They ought to like this heat and take off.
Somehow I’m thinkin’ those pole beans will soon dwarf those posts.
