William L. Rose wrote:
I'm still waiting on my Branywines but the Striped German tomatoes have
just reached maturity. I was reading "The Politics of Food" by Marion
Nestle, when my wife put the evening salad on the table. I finished a
couple of more sentences when the purfume of tomatoes wafted into my
consciousness. The tomatoes weren't overwhelming in flavor. No full body
orgasm as you might expect fom heroin but subtly, persuasivly tomato-y
(not to put too fine a point on it). I was pleased with my season's work.


Hi Bill and All, Have made second harvest of Brandywines, about eight
each of 4+ incher. The taste is much better. Since we have been having
2 weeks of rain and cool damp weather, mildew has appeared and attacked
the Brandywines first. We got some organic mildewcide, but probably
with the cool fall weather, it will be too late to be any use. Our
first frost, in SE Minnesota, probably will occur on schedule in a
couple weeks, Oct 1.

It appears that the Beam's Yellow Pear tomatoes is going to be far and
away the most prolific heirloom, with vines 8+ft long. They are
overtaking the Brandywines, Amish Paste, and Stupice. The Amish Paste
were the least productive. Too bad the 1 inch long Beam's tomatoes are
more trouble than they are worth!

During the cool, rainy spell, the Stupice are showing skin cracking on
the shoulder of almost every tomato. What causes this?

Should we harvest all tomatoes (ripe or not) during the eve of the
first hard frost?

Regards, Phil

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In article . com,
wrote:

wrote:
Penelope Periwinkle wrote:
On 24 Aug 2006 14:57:43 -0700, wrote:

Why are our Brandywines taking so long? Why is there such a fruit size
difference between Stupice and Brandywines?

They're different varieties, that's why. Brandywines have been
selected to produce fewer but larger tomatoes, and it takes longer

Our largest Stupice still is about 1 1/2", now into our third partial
harvest. Any way to encourage growth to 2 1/2", the advertised size?
Regards, Phil