Stup-endous tomatoes

Growing tomatoes is my favorite gardening project and challenge, so I'm always on the lookout for predictably good short-season varieties. This past season, on the recommendation of Tom DeGomez, I decided to try the varieties Stupice and Siletz, along with the old standby Early Girl.

Stupice (pronounced stoo-PEECH-ka) is an early-maturing heirloom hailing from the Morzuch region of the Czech Republic. It is one of four varieties sent to the U.S. by breeder Milam Sodomka in 1976 purportedly to keep them away from the Soviets. These tomatoes are described as 3-4 ounce deep red globes produced abundantly in clusters on indeterminate 4-6 foot plants with heavy potato-leaf foliage. Flavor is said to be very good for such an early tomato, sweet and tangy.

Cowpots

"Cowpots are created from completely dry composted manure mixed with natural fibers. Cowpots are 100% biodegradable. The pots will last for months in the greenhouse, or on your window. Once the pots are buried in the ground they dissolve in a few weeks. As they dissolve they provide nutrients for plants.

It seems a fitting time to find the germ of a new idea of gardening and very green. She first took root next to a stinking lagoon unspeakable in the northwest corner of Connecticut who is now in bloom gently nationally.

More than a decade ago, she thought it was in 1998, Jane Slupecki a marketing representative for the Ministry of Agriculture of Connecticut, took a group of farmers in the county of Litchfield dairy dinner stir- meninges in an inn on the lake there. His agency has a small grant to try to find possible solutions to a big smelly problem.

1. If your seedlings are in peat pots or cow pots, you can plant the whole pot. Make sure the pot rims don't stick up above the soil since they can act like a wick, drawing moisture away from plant roots. When the moisture is wicked, the pot dries out,