Rick, the article was definitely "interesting," but I can't say that it made me feel any better... kind of disturbing to think that Monsanto would be in charge of "improving" the heirloom varieties!
(at least the links that Corey posted just gave me a headache from trying to wade through and make some sense of it, I'm not used to having to think that much since I retired a few years back...
)
What is really disturbing is the trend to making it harder and harder for us to propagate plants -- legally, at least.
@Saltmarsh, Claud, that is a very interesting observation about the temps, I hadn't thought of that -- last summer (actually the last 2 summers) here was unusually cool, and I actually did notice a lot of the "fused" flowers. This year I'll take your advice and remove those blooms and any weird fruit -- I really do love this variety and it's worth taking a few extra measures! Also very interesting that the pruned and trellised plants produce ripe fruit so much earlier than the un-pruned, caged plants do... especially since the latter is the method that I use! I've also read that root pruning will produce earlier ripe fruit -- do you have any experience with that? Thanks for the great advice, anything I can do to get earlier (and nicer) tomatoes is a huge plus!
