Yeah, @WoodSprite, I was afraid for moose to steal the crop again, so I snuck the Amplissimo in amongst their allies on the tall trellises, a Latvian soup pea, Swedish Biskopens and some British Bulroyd Bean, hoping the moose would come late and only take the later and taller ones instead. I also shared seedlings of the group with a soup growing friend, and planted some at Mom's as a backup. It turned out that we had NO moose visitors because of the extreme heat I guess, so I got a decent crop of all the above, but never realized that anything was amiss until shucking time. The lovely 'chick pea' color must be dominant to green/grey, thus the ones I grew in 2020 seem to have been mostly F1 cross, with some previous, older crosses in the mix.
I had a look online and there are more companies offering AVU this season which are pictured with the true color. The seller I got them from stopped offering, but I found them for sale at another Nova Scotia farm, and there are green ones in the mix. So I think these have been crossing up for some generations and because they are all white flowered, not noticed.
Pea crosses are supposed to be fairly rare, because they normally self pollinate before the flowers open. But I guess that depends on environmental conditions and pollinator activity as well...

How did everyone's Ukrainian grow-outs go? I'd love to hear what varieties you all sent in for this swap.

Sadly, my Black Sea Man tomato germinated way, way, way too late for me to plant out so I couldn't grow it. (I did winter sowing and everything germinated later than it did last year.)

I did manage to grow Korichnevyy Rebristyy (Brown Ribbed) tomato and mailed lots of seeds to HL2601.

@HL2601, how are things going with the swap?

Sadly, interest generated in the beginning of the season has somewhat fizzled. I am holding onto anything I receive before NOV 1 , then I will redistribute and send seeds back to all participants.

If anyone wants to send seeds-now is the time!

My interest didn't fizzle, my health and my garden did. Lots of disease, bugs and seeds that never got processed. Sorry about that. On the plus side, I was growing a variety that is available commercially so won't be lost to the war.

Sorry to hear that, @Sue_CT. I can identify. It's a struggle for me to garden due to health. If it weren't for my tall raised beds, I couldn't do it. I'm sorry you are experiencing problems, too.

@HL2601, to be honest, I wondered if the swap was still on or not because there wasn't much communication or posts to keep interest going. Hopefully others that have posted in this thread previously will see that it's still on and we all can get back lots of Ukrainian seeds. How many varieties have you received so far? Any chance we can see a list of them, please?

Another tale of woe. I had an unusually horrible year for germination of hundreds of plants. It was so embarassing as I could not get 24 specific plants to germinate for my donation garden. I did several rounds of trays and finally had enough plants, then a spider mite attack resulted in the dumping of two lawn bags full of 1 foot transplants. Then came the triple attack of tree spraying while the remaining transplants were out sunning.

On a positive note, Tarasinko 6 was planted in trial section of the donation garden, and a photo of me holding a two fisted ripe 1.8 lb tomato was circulated in the Master Gardener weekly newsletter labeled "Ukrainian Tomato".

- Lisa

Oh, @greenthumbomaha, what a terrible year for you. Sorry to hear that. Congrats on the huge Tarasinko 6 tomato, though.

My interest didn't fizzle either. I put a LOT of time into my seed starts and then my garden took a hit between struggling to get a loved one with dementia into assisted living and becoming the guardian of another who has a lot of serious health issues. It was more than I could handle both physically and emotionally and and something had to give. Unfortunately it was my garden with the only tomatoes surviving this year being my naturalized Everglades patch.

WoodSprite wrote: ↑Sun Oct 30, 2022 9:55 pm Oh, @greenthumbomaha, what a terrible year for you. Sorry to hear that. Congrats on the huge Tarasinko 6 tomato, though.

It was my worst year , but still gets a rating of "Good". Many different plants such as green beans, celery, melons perked up late in the season, so I was actually gardening quite a bit, but it just felt different with so many sad tomato plants. At the low point I thought I might need to BUY tomatoes. It took forever for surviving tomato plants to set fruit. Thanks to an extended season, the small patch not near the manmade chemical spraying disaster produced up to frost (3 old seed hybrid varieties). Interesting that the greenies picked before the freak frost are good tasting to this day. I'm going to start a few in the mix and see how the Better Boy, etc. perform if this area ever experiences a cool wet season again.

- Lisa

Hello lovely tomato friends-here to report all Ukraine Tribute envelopes were posted today. They will hopefully be in your mailboxes around Thanksgiving. Thanks to everyone for doing their best to participate
Heide

Great, @HL2601. How many people ended up participating in the swap? How many different varieties were represented?

Regardles whether it was great or not so much year, I think what was more important is that many people have responded and participated in growing ukrainian varayeties.
Unfortunately I did not see it untill today. Was not an easy year so far. I would have participated as well.
I am so grateful to all that did participate in growing Ukrainian varieties. A thank you.

Seeds arrived yesterday...what an interesting assortment! Now if you'd only enclosed the garden space stretcher and the energy booster, life would be perfect! Many many thanks for all your efforts...

My seeds arrived on Friday and I am enjoying going through them. My mom thinks the Evgenia variety sounds extremely interesting. She has four open spots in her tomato row and it sounds like Evgenia is going to take one of them.

I haven't actually grown out Orange Icicle yet, though I grew bedding plants of it to sell years ago. I'm considering giving that a try this year.

Thank you for coordinating all this. It's much appreciated.

I received my seeds, too. Thank you.

Evgenia was a really tall plant in my garden. It produced very large fruits but with an intense heat wave, several of the first inflouresences just dropped. In the end, production wasn't great. If I could suggest growing anything, I would definitely tell folks to try Batyana Pink. I loved it-juicy meaty and yummy with great production. It was a real stand out in my garden.
Heide