LGT is going dark for a few days. I need to find a better platform for this blog.  Does anyone have any suggestions?

I'm currently on Blogspot powered by Google. It isn't working the way I want. To quote Sammy Davis, Jr. when asked why he hugged Tricky Dick Nixon: "It seemed like a good idea at the time."

Enough fooling around with those smaller paste tomatoes. Put Carol Chyko's Big Paste (above) to grow next year. Far less peeling

We experimented with Carol Chyko's Big Paste this year.  One of the winenrs. Big producer. Great flavor.  Hey, trying to varieties is half the fun of growing them yourself.

Pesky squirrels and chipmunks! Photo: Lynn M. Smith Photography/Flickr from the Mother Nature Network

Karla M asks:  How do I discourage chipminks from eating my almost-ripe tomatoes?

 Tom Oder of the Mother Nature Network suggests a variety methods, ranging from pets and cages to a capsaicin punch and more, uh, direct & merciless methods. I'm kinda skeptical of the one about firearms. Stats show you're more likely to blow a hole in your own foot.

German Johnson with Red Cherries. Photo by Joerg Metzner

Joerg Metzner of Evanston, Illinois tells us that it's been a great growing season and a great harvest.

First Harvest - Amana Orange

The wait is over. Nothing like starting the month with a table full of Amana Orange fresh off the vine, waiting for canning.

The pay off. The first harvest of one plant yielded 14 pounds of delicious, delectable, delightful Amana Orange tomatoes. Plenty to eat with enough left to can.

Save your lettuce containers now

The best seed-starting containers ever. Empty plastic lettuce tubs.

It's time to harvest. That means it's time to plan for January when you'll start your plants. I hate spending money. So over the years I've figured out a few cheap (and, I like to humbly believe, more effective) substitutes for things to use.

The best seed-starting containers you can get? The little plastic tubs that loose leaf lettuce comes in.  Unless you want to eat salads morning noon and night for all of December, start collecting these containers now. Keep the top, too. You'll need it.

Big plants. No fruit

John H asks: Why would my tomatoes grow 9 foot tall and hardly any fruit?

Okay, let's run three scenarios:

• If you never had flowers, then it's probably an excess of nitrogen.  Fertilizers are marked with three numbers: 10/10/10 (Nitrogen/Phosphorus/Potassium).
Nitrogen promotes the growth of leaves and vegetation
Phosphorus promotes root and shoot growth
Potassium promotes flowering and fruiting
Without a balance, and especially without enough potassium, no fruit, no flowers. Work some potassium into the soil – even though by now it's a little late.

• You had flowers but then no fruit. Then there was probably not enough pollination. That's caused by a number of things: Top-watering – which washes off the pollen too early. Or perhaps no bees.  "Collapsing bee colony disorder"  sounds like some kooky alien-intervention thing. But it's serious, especially for commercial fruit and nut growers who depend on bees. If there are no bees, simply shake the plant or (gently) run a small brush on and over the plants to disperse the pollen.

• It could also be not enough sun. One of the best places in a backyard property is an unobstructed south face of a house, fence or garage – if you have it.  You get the direct sunlight and the reflected light off the adjoining vertical surface.