CLOSED: Come Join us - Fourth Annual Tomato & Pepper Seed Exchange !

Welcome gardenquilts,

Welcome to our swap. I just sent you a private d-mail with more details.

Please send in the seeds you have for swapping. You have some great varieties there. this is a great opportunity for those newer to gardening to expand the varieties in their collection.

Thanks....Heather

Yippee, Thank You!

Mortgage Lifter and Tommy Toe sound good to me!

One reason that things become boring and ordinary is that they are so popular and well-loved!

Hurray to you for multiplying and preserving good varieties.

Corey

GardenQuilts- picture?

Add me again this year too! I just went through my packets and have some commercial ones I bought last Dec. that I can share! This addiction is really hard to control!! LOL!! I can't believe I still have a sizable wish list despite all the wonderful varieties I have received the last couple of years from this exchange!! I wonder if there is enough time in my life time to sample them all!!

I had hoped to get this done last weekend, but it wasn't to be. Anyhow, just finally got the seed packets all into their packs of ten. Here are the seed packets I'm contributing. One packet of 10 seeds each unless otherwise noted by(x). Pain in the butt getting them all packaged, but worth it. 50 seed packs of 10 in all:

Amana Orange, Angora Super Sweet, Anna Russian, Arkansas Traveller(x2), Aunt Ginny's Purple, Aussie, Berkeley Tie dye(x5), Black Krim, Black Sea Man, Blondkopfchen, Bloody Butcher, Clint Eastwood Rowdy Red, Dagmas Perfection, Dr. Carolyn, Early Annie(x2), Fargo, Fence Row Cherry, Flamme, Giant Belgium, Great White, Green Giant, Hawaiian Pineapple, Hillbilly, Isis Candy, Japanese Black Trifele, Jersey Devil, Lime Green salad, Marriannas Peace, Marvel Striped, Matt's Wild Cherry(x2), Moskovich, Paul Robeson, Persimmon, Pixie Striped, Principe Borghese, Silvery Fir Tree, Snow Ball, Sprite, Texas Star, Tim's Black Ruffles, Wapsiconan Peach, Yellow Pear(boo!), and Yellow Ruffled.

Surprise me with 15-20 packs of something I didn't pitch in. The rest use for bonus. I've got more seeds than I can use, and am too happy to help. Sending Monday. :)

Here is a picture of my first tomato of the season - Mortgage Lifter. Tommy Toe was my favorite snack. I had to restrain myself and save some seeds instead of popping them in my mouth - one after another. I usually don't like cherry tomatoes, but I like TT - tastes like a big tomato. "Tommy Toe - the little tomato with the big tomato taste". Can you tell Mad Men is my favorite tv show?

We're up to 110 participants !!!
I'll continue to accept new signups for a couple of weeks.

Thanks....Heather

I would like to Donate Tomato Seeds if accepted? Please let me know..

I just harvested my first home-grown tomatoes ever! Stupice & Sun Gold.

I'll be sending these.

Omar's Lebanese .INDET . . . . LATE . . . huge pink
Sun Gold F1 . . . . .INDET . . . early? . . . . orange cherry
Sub Artic Plenty . . .DET . . . . very early & cool . . . med-small red
Manitoba . . . . . . . . DET . . . extra-early & cool . . med red (containers)
Stupice . . . . . . . . .INDET . . . . . ultra-early & cool . . . med-small red
Glacier . . . . . DET or semi-det . ultra-early . . 1-3 oz red-orange
Ildi yellow grape . . INDET . . . . . extra-early . . . .
Jaune Flamme. . . .INDET . . . . . mid-season . . 2-3 oz orange
Old Flame. . . . . . . INDET . . . . . mid-season . . 24 oz? orange-yellow w' red streaks
Pruden's Purple. . .INDET . . . . . mid-season . . 16 oz purple-pink
Marglobe. . . . . . . . semi-det . . . mid-season . . med red



This message was edited Sep 26, 2011 12:03 PM

GardenQuilts - I have about 600 different varieties of tomato seeds, and you still have 1 I haven't tried. Just to show you that old and tried and true does not equal boring! Ain't no such animal in the tomato world! (Burp!)

Kim M. We will gladly accept donations. Thank you so much for your generosity. I will send you a pm to connect further.

RickCorey_WA - send your envelope any time you're ready. Had my first envelope arrive a couple of days ago. I just sort, file and update my spreadsheets as they come in gradually.

We're up to 112 participants....woo hoo !!!!

Today I received seeds from a member with the initials PB from Denman Island, BC. I'm sorry but I don't know who you are and you need to contact me with your member id. Folks, as a friendly reminder, when you send your seeds, please make sure you include a note inside your envelope that has your member id clearly marked. I need this to be able to keep track of whose seeds I've received and who I'm still waiting on. DB from Denman Island, can you please contact me and advise your member id?

Thank you.

Back of my kitchen counter looks like a science lab experiment right now. Still fermenting and have one or two more that are being slow to ripen. Several are just about ready to clean and dry. Good, that will make room for the slow ones. You will not receive mine for awhile, Heather, but they will get there. I love doing this so I am glad I signed up.

I plan to mail my seeds on Monday - life and weather permitting. I want to give them plenty of time to get to Canada!

Don't feel bad, my kitchen still looks like a lab experiment, the cat thinks drying seed stalks are new toys and Winston the pug is irritated that I am spending so much time in the kitchen rustling paper bags, shaking cups and sifting seeds but not making any FOOD. I am tired of pulling Chinese forget -me-not seeds aka nature's Velcro from my slippers.

My plants are loving this rain, but I would love a few more nice days before the freezing temperatures arrive.

Lots of time yet to get your seeds in Beebonnet. As long as I get them by November 15th, we're good.

We're up to 121 participants and with a few weeks left for signups...I fully expect a record for the number of signups this year.

As a heads up to everyone, I am out of town on business September 25th thru Sept 29th, and will not be able to respond to posts, dmail, or signups during that time. I will update you on any envelopes received this upcoming week when I return.

I am still needing someone with the initials PB from Denman Island to contact me. I have received your seeds but I have no idea who you are. I need you to get in touch with me and tell me your member id so I can track accordingly.

Thanks...Heather

I received seeds from "Don Shirer".

We're up to 125 participants. Still taking signups for a couple of more weeks.

Still needing the person with the initials PB (first and last name) from Denman Island, BC to get in touch with me. I have received your seeds but have no idea who you are. I need your member id to update my tracking.

Thanks everybody.

We're up to 131 participants !!!!

I am still needing PB from Denman Island, BC to contact me. :)

Today I received seeds from "muck4doo".

Today I received seed from "nancyruhl".

Thanks....Heather

The last day to sign up for this swap will be October 15th !!! If you've been sitting on the sidelines debating on whether or not you should join...don't be shy.

We're up to 133 participants.

Hi everyone,

I know there will be a few people that are struggling to finalize their wish lists. If you have your seeds all packed and ready to go, feel free to mail those now. You can always send me your wish list by email attachment later (by the deadline).

I keep all of the wish lists in a spreadsheet for easy sorting, so it's no work for me to add to your list (or delete from it, if you already received a wish list item from a trade).

Thanks....Heather

is it ok to say things like slicing tomatoes or sweet red peppers for the wish list part without knowing names? i am so new i am not even sure about specific names.
kc

Yes that would be fine. The parameters you mention are doable for me to research, however, where possible, adding names to your list is best as it helps save me time researching seed types to fill your list. I expect to receive over 600 different tomato types in this swap, and close to the same number of different peppers, so the research on each type is quite extensive, if I have to look up the characteristics of each submission. I try to do that as best I can, but anything you can do to help build out your list with specific names helps a great deal.

I've had some people put requests like "I only want productive tomatoes" or "tomatoes from the 1940s and 1950s" on their list. That's a huge task for me to research as it would depend on your specfic growing conditions etc and I would have to spend a ton of time trying going through various resource sites trying to find tomatoes that meet those specific conditions. Much easier if the participants spend a bit of time doing some research if there are specific qualities they are looking for and then passing along some names to me. There are lots of good postings in this forum that could help you build out a list.

I hope this helps.

Everyone...please be sure to keep checking back in the forums periodically for updates. I will not be contacting everyone individually for important updates, as there are just too many participants to do that.

Thanks...Heather

This message was edited Oct 7, 2011 4:04 PM

Would it help if we sent a short description of the varieties we send seed for? I didn't do that but could email you dmail you the info.

Sure Nancy...that would be great. Some varieties I've already got descriptions built out on, but often there are a lot of seeds that come in that I've never heard of before. Thanks...Heather

>> I keep all of the wish lists in a spreadsheet for easy sorting

Cool, I didn't know! I'll be sure to send an e-copy to save you typing.
Want to post the order of your columns, and maybe your abbreviations??

Here's what I try to get onto every paper label,
even though they fit in a 1.5" Ziploc:

cultivar name
O.P.
DET / INDET / semi
ultra-early / extra-early / mid-season (as alleged by vendor or confirmed elsewhere)
"for cool climates"
color of fruit
potato leaf / regular
size or wieght of fruit alleged by vendor
vendor &year
size of vines alleged by vendor
flavor if it seems plausible and supported by other vendors
disease resistances

I noticed that almost every cultivar is "highly productive", "best flavor" and "earliest" in some catalogs.

Hi Rick,

The descriptions you have are great. Easy for me to incorporate in my setup. The spreadheet works great for me. I can easily search how many people are searching for "grub's mystery green" for example, and compare to how many of that seed pack I actually have. If someone doesn't mention that they are interested in that specific variety when they really are, they run the risk of not getting it, because I'm more likely to allocate it to people that had it specifically mentioned on their wish list. If I don't have enough of one seed type to fill all of the wish lists, then I apply my sense of fairness in distributing those seeds.

I won't bother posting column or abbreviation info on the spreadsheets. I don't want to make it more difficult for anyone.

The main thing is for people to take the time to put together a wish list, so they will be truly pleased with the result.

Thanks.....Heather

This message was edited Oct 7, 2011 6:43 PM

>> If someone doesn't mention that they are interested in that specific variety when they really are, they run the risk of not getting it,

Logical.

You do a LOT of work to make this happen!

I forget if I said last year that your method seemed like the best-run swap I ever saw or heard of ... but it depends on you doing all the work. All the machinery and overhead effort of DG's Plant Files Have / Want lists seem to me about 2% as effective as your swap.

Ella's "Hog Wild Swap" is also in the running for "best swap", but it is wildly different in most ways.

Thanks, Heather!

Happy to do this Corey. I see it as a big group effort really. It takes the enthusiasm and participation of a lot of great people from around the world to make this swap a success.

I astonished myself by finallyy getting a few ripe Stupuce and even fewer ripe Sungold cherries.
But some finally ripened!

I have more commerical Stupice seed already, and Sungold is F1, so learning fermentation is for some other year.

P.S. It is true what they say: with Sungold cherry tomatoes, you really have let them get at least as ripe as possible before the flavor turns from sugary-bland to sweet-fruity-tropical-worthwhile. It seems to me that the "orange" blushes over into an "almost-red-orange" before they're worth eating. the they're good, even though low-acid.

In my garden, this year, that means "wait until they split from the rain, and THEN pick them".

I don't have much luck with sungold in my climate. Tried it a couple of times, and I haven't been able to get that sweet fruity taste. I thought they were supposed to be relatively easy to grow, but they probably do a whole lot better with more heat than I get here.

I finally picked the rest of my green tomatoes tonight. Was hopeful they'd ripen outdoors under clear plastic to protect from frost, but now the nights are just getting too cold. Not a great growing year, but was pleasantly surprised at how big the grub's mystery green grew in the wet cool weather we had this year. This was my first year growing it, and it was nice...and quite sweet. Maybe a bit sweet for my liking, but I will grow it again as it was very productive and nice large fruits compared to everything else I grew. Fermenting seed on this one right now.

Here is an interesting descriptive list of tomatoes. I found several of mine here.
http://faq.gardenweb.com/faq/lists/tomato/2000082820026233.html
Sh-h-h Don't tell where i found it. LOL
Beebonnet

that is such a cool list. thank you for posting it
kc

Who cares where you got the list? What matters is that you brought it here. Thanks

As a supplement to the previous list recommended I would add Tatiana's Fact List. I use it frequently to research heirloom and open pollinated varieties since that is my main interest at present. Her list does not include hybrids unless they have been grown to become open pollinated: http://t.tatianastomatobase.com:88/wiki/Category:Tomato_Variety_List

I used to love Tania's TomatoBase. THE best.

But since they changed their Web address to include the ":88", I haven't been able to find a security setting that let's my browser access any part of it.

Sigh.

Corey

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving everyone !!!

I will be out of town on business October 12th thru 15th and will not be responding to d-mail or new signups during this time. I will respond to all correspondence and provide updates on envelopes received when I return.

Thanks....Heather