I look forward to hearing more about your tomato adventures down there Mike! BTW, your Rhodies are doing surprisingly well, even with our terrible drought last summer. You were right!

Thanks so much, Francois. I will check out the link. I use Google Books most often, so it shouldn't be a problem – I've found a few resources on there for Mignonette – fingers crossed that this is even a better one – it's date is so early! Can't wait!! thanks.

Southern breeders have worked on a lot of resistances: I bought a bunch of varieties from the deep south.

So far, none of the 38 tomato varieties planted in the ground survived to make more than 2 trusses with very small fruit. Early blight kills them fairly thoroughly. Some in pots in the rain and pots under the eaves (to avoid the rain) have prospered. In the greenhouse (which acts as a large transparent umbrella), about half produced substantial growth and fruit, though the light in the greenhouse is only about 1/3 full sun due to dirt and shade cloth. The best flavored variety so far (to my taste) has been Snow Cherry. Iva's Sweet White has produced very well and also has good flavor. Mountain Magic F1 has been the best producer of larger tomatoes that taste fine, but all my production is very low so far.

The peppers I've tried so far have been disease free!? Eggplants have fared poorly due to giant grasshoppers, spider mites, and who knows what else. I may need to grow transplants of these much larger before setting them out.

I've bought a lot of varieties that supposedly have various disease resistances, including to early and late blights. We'll see how they do. Recognizing tomato diseases is tricky: I may have to get out my good microscopes to diagnose some. I'm sure I've got quite an assortment.