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Old October 21, 2011   #3
Dewayne mater
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Join Date: May 2008
Location: DFW, Texas
Posts: 1,212
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Feldon is right on in all of his advice. I had gone to 100% heirloom varieties for about 3 years, but this fall I added back a hybrid Big Beef, thinking it might survive the devil's crotch heat of this summer when I planted them in August. They did. Right now they are covered in tomatoes from a few that are full sized and I hope will color up in a couple of weeks, down to newbies. They are crazy productive. We'll see if they do what is much harder and maintain good taste and texture as we get less and less hours of sunlight and colder and colder night temps. I will also add sungold to his list which I grew for the first time this year. (It's probably also a hybrid but I'm not sure). This delicious (to me) cherry type was a champion producer for me up until about August even in this year's heat, when I thought it died. Wrong! New branches have appeared and it has dozens of cherry toms appearing once again. Love it!

I am a big supporter of Raybo's earth tainers. Two growing seasons of foundation repairs took away my suburban beds, as they were all up against the house. I finally have my beds back this fall, but, I will continue to use earthainers as well as soil going forward. In short, they are water misers, they help minimize disease as they never get water on their leaves, your plants grow more quickly in the spring as the above ground soiless mix is MUCH quicker to heat up in the sun than the ground is, they continue to produce longer into the summer (though I'm not sure why they would, they just have for me) and if you get obsessive about it (aren't we all!) you can use a roller to move your tainers into a garage over night if you get a cold snap early in the fall and thereby extend your fall season. Last year we had some November freezes overnight - I moved them into the garage - then it warmed up for another 2-3 weeks prior to the next freeze. I move them back outside and got many more tomatoes to ripen before we hit a streak of really cold weather, then I put them in the garage and lived another couple of weeks before lack of light, etc. did them in. Many, many advantages to using E.T.s, but those are some major ones I've experienced. Good luck and hope and pray for rain and less scorching summers!

Dewayne Mater.
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