September 2010 Seeds Update

My dear gardening friends and customers,

We had a very disappointing tomato year, due to a very short summer and extreme temperature fluctuations from cool to hot, negatively affecting fruit set. This resulted in unsatisfactory crops or some crop failures, and very small quantities of seeds I could save this year from the healthy fruits. The growing conditions also affected fruit size for some varieties - I did not have many 1 lb+ tomatoes this year, although I could see that some new to me varieties were certainly capable of producing huge fruit. Therefore, please take my descriptions of the new tomatoes with a grain of salt. On a positive note, the varieties that produced well and tasted good were real treasures - I am sure they will produce and taste even better under more favorable conditions.

Many new to me Russian tomatoes really stood out and performed well in the bad summer.

I had complete crop failures with all my watermelon growouts this year, and only some melon varieties produced fruit - Sleeping Beauty, Petit Gris de Rennes and Spear.

Lettuce and sweet peppers did very well this year. Please look for new varieties added to my seed lists, there are some stellar performers there! The sweet peppers loved the micro-climate in the plastic cages, and they produced mature fruit by the end of July, which is very early for us.

If you are looking for 'new in 2011' tomato varieties, please order early, as I will have very limited supply for some late season, paste, hearts, and large-fruited varieties. Some new sweet pepper varieties had very few seeds, so I may have a limited supply for these also.

Most of the tomato seeds have been already processed and some are still going through germination tests and drying out, so the seed list below has most of the new tomato varieties by now.

Thank you very much for your support of Tatiana's TOMATObase website and our preservation efforts.

To better tomato year for all of us in 2011!
Tatiana

September 14, 2010.