Hi, all. I'm Seven Bends, from the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC (hardiness zone 7a). I learned vegetable gardening by working in my parents' community garden plot as a kid in the 1970s; now I have my own plot in that same community garden, all these years later. My most unusual and challenging gardening experiences were as a volunteer agriculture extension agent in the Peace Corps teaching vegetable gardening in the Sahel. Nowadays it's the normal challenges of weeds, heat, blight, and how to fit 30 varieties of tomatoes into 14 spaces. I'm glad to be here and looking forward to participating in the conversations.

Welcome! Glad you could join us

Welcome to the Junction from Down Under [mention]Seven Bends[/mention]

Welcome from a fellow community gardener.

Welcome to the Junction

Welcome! Look forward to you sharing your experiences

Glad to have you on Board!

Welcome from NE PA! Sounds like you have had some interesting gardening experiences worldwide! Looking forward to your input here on Tomato Junction!

Welcome! I too look forward to hearing of your experiences on all sides of the pond.

Hi neighbor! Welcome!

Welcome to the forum!

Big welcome!

Thanks for the warm welcome, everyone!

Welcome to TomatoJunction, [mention]Seven Bends[/mention]!

Seven Bends wrote: ↑Sun May 23, 2021 8:59 pm . . . Nowadays it's the normal challenges of . . . how to fit 30 varieties of tomatoes into 14 spaces. . . .

I'm starting to try to address that challenge! I have a habit of growing so many tomatoes that it's a challenge to find places for them all. So, I planted twelve Stick tomatoes (with pompom leaf foliage) to intersperse with my other tomatoes, and hope some cross-pollination happens. Same for Napoli. I got seven Stick plants out of that (some died and maybe some didn't sprout); I might have some more growing, though.

Stick's pompom leaf foliage should be great in a cramped situation. Napoli just has a small plant, but produces well anyway.

Anyway, my hope is to eventually have say hundreds of varieties of plants with pompom foliage, and then it should be easy to find and harvest all the fruit (I don't cage most of my plants; so, I have to do some maneuvering and searching). With pompom foliage, the leaves shouldn't shade or cover other plants. The leaves stay pretty tightly by the stem.

I don't have any Stick crosses, yet, though (unless any of the ones I planted are incidental crosses)--but [mention]Nico[/mention] seems to have at least one.

Regular Stick isn't the easiest to start by my current method (the easiest this year would be Garden Leader Monster). A cross between those two might be nice.

[mention]Seven Bends[/mention] welcome from the uk

[mention]Seven Bends[/mention] Welcome to TJ from a fellow Virginian. I garden on Bend #3.

rdback wrote: ↑Thu May 27, 2021 9:25 am @Seven Bends Welcome to TJ from a fellow Virginian. I garden on Bend #3.

Thanks, and I'm so glad you recognize the reference! I don't actually live near the Seven Bends, just an occasional visitor to that beautiful part of the state.

Welcome to the Junction. I'm in Arlington, VA and also have a community garden plot. There are a few of us from the area on here so maybe someday we can get together for seed or seedling swap, etc.

[mention]zendog[/mention] Good idea. I lived in Arlington until five years ago; Fairfax County now. I tried to get a garden plot in Arlington but moved away before my name ever came up on the list.