I thought it would be productive to keep a journal of my gardening experiences. My garden is located in USDA zone 5b in the Litchfield hills of Northwest Connecticut. With oil prices headed nowhere but up, growing some of your favorite fruits and vegetables will not only provide you and your family with good nutritious food, but you will be able to control the use and applications of pesticides most of which will not be harmful to humans and pets. This year I decided to grow four different cultivars of tomatoes in order to observe and document which plants are most adapted to the garden enviornment that I have created. My experience with growing tomatoes in the past was mixed at best, but I must admit that this year's crop was well beyond my expectations. Here it is the beginning of October and I'm still harvesting tomatoes.

Plants were started inside my home on April 15 and were subsequently moved into the coldframe to harden off and then were transplanted permanently into the soil under black plastic from the midddle of May to around the middle of June. While many a gardener has his/her tricks of the trade I found this trick particularly useful: Several tablespoons of calcium applied in the form of instant non-fat dry milk powder to the soil (root zone) of the plants has significant benefits to the overall growth and vigor of the plants.

The instant non-fat dry milk powder ought to be applied when plants are first installed in the garden and when the soil temperature reaches 60° F. and then subsequently afterward until about midseason or the latter part of July in USDA zone 5b. The instant non-fat dry milk powder does not alter the soil pH significantly. The pH of the garden soil in my garden was slightly acidic at around 6.5

Protecting seedling stems with a cardboard collar upon transplanting also has useful and prophylactic benefits against soil born cutworms. A three or four inch cardboard tube from a roll of toilet paper or paper towel can be used to wrap the stem of the seedling tomato up to the first set of leaves and, additionally, extended below the soil surface by an inch or two. Slice the cardboard tube longitudinally so that it can be opened and placed around the stem without damaging the seedling. Tomatoes are adventitious and will root readily when the stem is planted deeper in the soil than they were grown in the container. Planting the seedling stem deeper than it was originally grown in the container will encourage the plant to develop a more vigorous and robust root system. Using the paper collar method during transplanting will assure that your plants do not get damaged by cutworms living in the soil during a most critical time of their development.

'Roma' tomatoes are determinate plants meaning that the fruits mostly ripen at the same time, but I have been harvesting them over a period of about six weeks. Some ripened early, most ripened about the same time, and some ripened late. I would highly recommend 'Roma' tomatoes for Connecticut gardens. The other tomato cultivars that I grew from seed this season were Heirloom cultivars 'Pink Brandywine', 'Peron Sprayless', and 'Burbank'. Of the four cultivars, 'Roma' exceeded my expectations in fruit quality, taste, good resistance to disease and insect attack, and produced healthy and vigorous plants in an organic growing environment. I would have to rate the heirloom cultivar 'Burbank' as second in taste and quality followed by the heirloom 'Peron Sprayless' and finally the heirloom 'Pink Brandywine' with its exceptionally large fruit. 'Pink Brandywine' was plagued with blossom end rot in spite of additional applications of non-fat dry powdered milk (calcium) and was the last group of plants to mature. I think 'Pink Brandywine' would be better suited to a warmer USDA zone in order to maximize the virtues of this plant.

October 9th brings the end of the tomato and pepper growing season with a hard frost earlier in the week.