>>> Part 1 of 2...
 -=> Quoting Sandra Peake to Helen Peagram <=-
Hi Sandra!
Glad to hear from you.  Have posted you a number of times without response
and thought perhaps you were ticked off with me.  Obviously you didn't get
the previous messages.
 SP> Hi Helen, we've had a good summer, thanks. Practically abandoned our
 SP> garden, though, and it shows. 6 foot ragweed among the corn.
 SP> Ka-choo! :-) Since I got the Matt's wild cherry, an awful lot of
 SP> people have gotten it from me. It's rather surprising how people are
 SP> willing to put up with its rampant growth because it tastes so good,
 SP> but that also shows how far modern varieties have come from their
 SP> sweet beginnings.
Glad to hear you had a nice summer.  We did a lot of growing from seed this
year with the new sun room and it worked out great.  Jim has just come down
with a cold and I am hoping to avoid catching it.  Rampant is right!  and
we had hundreds of voluntaries as well as the ones we planted.
 HP>Everyone loves them and you only need a couple to keep a family supplied
 HP>most of the time.
 SP> I put 5 or 6 plants inside cages, and eat them like candy everytime
 SP> I head into the garden. Since the mice and crickets prefer Brandywine
 SP> hands down (and heavy fruit down at mulch level), I am harvesting
 SP> the Wild Cherries and freezing them whole. Their skins are so tender
 SP> that when I drop a handful into soup, the skins seem to disappear.
 SP> They cause me no problems whatsoever.
Hmmm, Jim suggested it, so perhaps I will try that too.
 SP> Another heirloom tomato that I'm pleased with is Crimsonvee. (OK, so
 SP> it was a commercial offering not too many years ago. :-)) The fruits
 SP> have intensely coloured interiors, and the fruits are quite solid
 SP> and meaty, great for sauces. I do skin these ones.
Hmm, what size tomato are they.  We tried Oxheart and they tend to split
very easily, but saved some seed because they are so meaty.
 HP>I also managed to grow 6 "Pretty in Purple" from seed and will be saving
 HP>them again this year.
 SP> I still have the original plant from seed that I started 18 months
 SP> ago. At times, like now, it looks pretty ratty and almost dead, but
 SP> if I prune off the withered fruits and dead tips, and judiciously
 SP> feed and water it, it seems to always come back. (I've saved seeds,
 SP> just in case.) However, it's too hot for my family; they're cowards
 SP> about stuff that stings eyes and mouth. 
I am glad to hear about pruning them back because I was just going to try
that.  One plant has just put out a bunch of new flowers.
I tried making a sort of sauce with just marinating the peppers in wine, but
haven't had the nerve to try it in cooking yet. 
 HP>This year we grew "early girl", "oxheart" and the standard "beefsteak"
 HP>tomatoes.  I have been using the dehydrator instead of canning them and
 HP>do hope they work well for what I use them for.
 SP> I've been going to dry some, but my ambition exceeds my ability -
 SP> and my ambition is at a low ebb during allergy season. I made a small
 SP> batch of salsa the other day - wouldn't mind a couple dozen jars,
 SP> but between slow ripening and voracious mice, the tomatoes are very
 SP> slow. And we've had light frost already. After this downpour ends, I
 SP> hope the garden dries enough for me to do some more harvesting before
 SP> I lose ambition or get frosted out entirely.
Do you make green tomato mincemeat?  That's what I do with all my end of
season green tomatoes.  We really like it.
 HP>I grew some red sweet shepherd peppers from seed I got from peppers I
 HP>bought from the store and they are doing  well too.
 SP> I grew about 6 varieties of peppers, but while we were away on
 SP> vacation (first summer vacation in many years), drought, mice and
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