We plant Early Girl, Better Boy and Arkansas Travelers and we have had more tomatoes than we can use and they taste great. We don't have any problem giving them to folks who don't garden. The heat here has just about done in our garden for the year...Arkansas.

Do most of you grow your tomato plants from seed? Or do you buy seedlings?

I always bought seedlings from a local family run greenhouse.

I have a Grape Tomato plant in a Topsy Turvy & they are the sweetest tasting tomatoes I have ever tasted. We also have a Cherry Tomato plant in one & it is good but not near as tasty as the grape tomatoes. We have a friemd that is growing beautiful JetStar Tomatoes. They are a high acid tomato & gosh they are soooooo good! I want to try those next year.

Have an Amish greenhouse nearby that starts plants. They have a lot of the open pollinated varieties, otherwise known as the heirloom plants. Gave up on the hybrid plants several years ago because of the flavor(less) issue. Love the German pinks, Ox Heart (a meaty roma type) and one that the Amish call Hillbilly. Have some blossom end rot going on right now, too much heat and watering problems binding up calcium. Will probably give them each a Tums in a couple of gallons of water in the morning and see if they won't turn around - not an easy project since we have 8 dozen of them in this year.

Years ago I always grew Better Boy and Better Girl and Beefsteak tomato plants, already started and they were good and I had tons. Kids are grown and gone and I don't even like to plant flowers, ground too hard and too hot and dry, of course, weeds do just great, hard to pull them out, ground is so hard.

I only buy tomatoes right now,from Tennessee.They have the best flavor so far compared to others.

I religiously plant early girls here in Ill. I always pick the first ones around the 4th of july. I also throw in a bag of mushroom compost before I plant and they just thrive and oh so yummy. The compost is at my local grocery store garden center.

Next year look for the heirloom varities. I always grown Pruden's Purple, think that's the name and they are to die for. Brandywine is also very good but both are slow to mature here in Maine and sometimes the frost wins out.

One thing my Nurseryman husband used to do
for our own tomatoes, was to add plain old
Epsom Salt to the soil. He added it to everything
we grew, and they used it by the hundred pound
sacks at the nursery in potted plants.

It made our lemon tree produce larger, thinner
skinned fruit with sweeter juice. Works nicely on
all citrus, among other fruits and veggies.