I've grown both lucida and minuta. The Tagetes minuta, aka nematocidal marigold, is often grown to deter root knot nematodes. It grew at least 8' tall for me when I grew it, and reseeded abundantly so that I had volunteers everywhere the next year. The flowers are very, very tiny--nothing whatsoever worth looking at. I only grew it for a handful of years, working it into the soil at the sandy west end of my garden to deter RKNs if any were even present. My neighbors have RKNs and warned me about them, so I grew T. minuta more as a precautionary measure, though maybe I wouldn't even have needed it. I've only had nematodes on 1 tomato plant here in all those years, so I don't think my soil is infested with RKNs anyhow.

T. lucida, which I call Mexican Mint Marigold, because that's the name it was called in Texas when I first started growing it, is grown as a substitute for tarragon, which doesn't grow well in our climate. It gets maybe 2-3' tall here and has pretty yellow flowers that have that marigold look about them. It does better for me in dry years (with some irrigation) and is considerably less happy in very wet years. I grow it in a raised bed filled with highly amended clay.

So if your plants all look the same and they are only 2-3' tall, I bet everything you have is T. lucida. If you have some that are getting taller than you and have flowers so small you barely can see them, that's T. minuta.

I haven't used either for tea. To my taste buds, Mexican Mint Marigold tastes like itself, and not necessarily exactly like true tarragon, but it is a nice addition to dishes and it does grow well here, which true tarragon does not. YMMV as all taste buds are as individual as the person to whom they belong.

With the Black Krim tomatoes, there is a certain degree of tanginess to them but some sweetness as well. It your fruit has tasted too tangy or tart and not sweet as well, you might be harvesting them a bit early. I harvest them by the degree of softness I feel when I squeeze gently, not by appearance. BK has a very complex flavor and it can vary from year to year. I think the weather and soil both affect its flavor, but it has long been one of my favorites. I have some growing in the garden right now even though I haven't watered it in ages and we're in severe drought, so it is a pretty tough plant too. Once again, though, taste is subjective and one person may love BK and another may hate it, and that's just because each of us has taste buds that perceive flavor differently.

Squash bugs are relentless. That's why I have largely abandoned all squash except for the C. moschata types, which includes both summer and winter types. All squash can be harvested as either a young summer type or an older winter type, so one of my favorite summer squashes is Seminole when harvested only 2-4 days after being pollinated/fertilized. I'm trying a zucchini-like C. moschata squash next year. If you look on the Avocado Squash page and click on the link to Kitazawa Seeds for the avocado squash, you'll see that zucchini-like variety right there on that same page. While squash bugs still bother C. moschata, the vines are so rambling and large that they generally outgrow the damage and produce well all summer, which I cannot say is true of zucchini in our climate.

Yeah, I've got minuta. I grew it last year, trying to kill bindweed. Apparently in some places it actually helps slow bindweed down. I grew it in buckets this year, so not as tall as last, but tiny flowers. It is also supposed to repel insects. Someone did their thesis on using it against ticks in Africa. Folk lore used powdered dried leaves. This guy used essential oil and analysed its chemical components and found there were some components that repelled ticks. I can tell you it had NO effect on the vicious mosquitos I was battling tonight! (Those suckers were even going for my eyes).

Surprisingly, I have a tarragon plant that has lived for 3 years now. We bought the plant, I have no idea what variety it is. It even blooms for me. (Thyme, on the other hand, hates me.)

I chose not to grow squash this year because of the bugs. DH really wanted zucchini. So I grew this parthenocarpic variety under tulle. I really think for the garden footprint we could buy the little bit of zucchini we use, but I liked this one. Almost no seeds, even in really big ones. Hybrid of course. Partenon from Johnny's if anyone is interested. By late season it was probably a 4'x4' plant. I was hoping it would be a little smaller. I might try one of you "avocado" squash next year, but mochatas are so big, I don't know where to put them.
I don't know if I've got a Black Krim or not. We've cut 2 of them and they both were very tart. Seemed ripe, but if I get another I will wait longer. Cherokee purple is still my favorite. I liked the pink boar, but DH didn't. Opalkas have good taste and are huge. Of course, this is an odd year, some things I don't like may do better next year.

My opalkas are never huge. I love the taste, but they are not a great producer for me and the fruits are never big. I really don't like the looks of the vine either. I planted them for several years, then gave up on them.

My opalka fruit are big by "paste" tomato comparison and heavy, solid. They are not what I would call productive, but I thought I would try them again next year to see if they produced better.

I grew Opalka a long time before I just got tired of its relatively skimpy production and replaced it with Heidi instead. I do love Opalka's flavor but I don't think it loves our heat.

Heidi doesn't produce big fruit, but each plant produces tons of them. The problem with Heidi is that if you plant a long row of them, you're likely to die of exhaustion trying to keep up with the harvesting/canning. I took a break from Heidi this year and still had too many tomatoes to keep up with. It's probably a good thing I didn't plant Heidi because the rain made everything produce so heavily.

I'm finally harvesting tomatoes from our fall tomato plants, which is surprising because I stopped watering them in early September. The plants are scrawny and don't look good, but they are producing fruit and, thanks to the fruit growing in dryland conditions, they are tasty.

I have an unlabeled pear shaped tomato that has been very productive, but I can't say I love the taste. Maybe I will just do rutgers or something similar next year, though DH is wanting paste tomatoes. He thinks you have to use them to make paste...could try heidi, but this year I got tired of harvesting small tomatoes.

I made a small batch of paste in the summer. I did have one that was as you describe, but it was tiny and orangey.

SO, I made paste tomatoes with regular maters. Now i understand why paste tomatoes exist. Took a while for reduction. That wasn't so bad, but the seeds were prolific. If I had a larger batch, say for canning, I'd definitely want paste. My 3 serving tomato paste was yummy as all get-out.

I'll need to try harder growing paste tomatoes for some serious pastiness. My boy loves my Italian paste.

DH picked out all the paste types yesterday and cooked them in the crock pot. Now there were only about a dozen and some didn 't look fully ripe to me, but you know husbands. It was still not very thick. I grew Goldman's Italian this year. It was in a raised bed with good soil and shouldn't have been impacted as much by the weather. I was not impressed by production and I thought the plant had died. When it cooled off it started growing over the trellis again. It is a large, heavy pleated variety, which if production was good would be meaty enough to speed up paste. Taste was good. I also grew it in a pot and got only one fruit, so I believe it needs lots of room and it sprawls. I may give it another try next year. I suddenly find myself with a bunch of big slicing tomatoes that I hate to cook, but I can't eat them all. It will probably be the last of them.

This year I grew a bunch of oxhearts because I expected the kind of weather they adore---wet and cool---and we had a bumper crop of them in June and July. They were wonderful for canning because they are so meaty and have very little juice, but also were huge so it didn't take many of them to make a batch. Unfortunately, oxhearts don't do well in our usual hot and dry weather so it could be years before we once again have the type of of spring/early summer weather they really need in order to be productive. I'll probably plant a few next year since the El Nino rains might send us into spring and summer in good shape.

I used to grow tons of paste tomatoes but have largely gotten away from that the last few years as the flavor of mixed varieties of heirlooms is superior to that of even the best paste tomatoes, even though it takes a lot longer to cook them down. I also use some tricks in the kitchen to remove as much water as possible from regular tomatoes before cooking them down. I quarter the raw tomatoes and scoop out all the gel and seeds. After I scoop out all the gel and seeds, I leave the tomatoes draining in a fine mesh colander for a couple of hours. The colander sits right over half of the double sink, and the moisture just drips out. Then I run them through the tomato mill and cook them. It is suprising how much more quickly they cook down after I've removed the gel and seeds and also have let them drip in that colander.

I don't know if I'll ever grow many, if any, paste tomatoes again. Maybe I'll grow a few but I feel like my days of endlessly harvesting the smaller paste types like Heidi are just about over. These days I go with the much larger paste types like Roman Speckled, for example, because one large Roman Speckled paste tomato can be the equivalent of 6-10 Heidi tomatoes.

Tx for the tip. The one paste tomato I had last year didn't taste good at all. I'm thinking I like the mixes better. It's fun trying out the differences.

When I eat fresh tomatoes,I feel like the best Flavor is in the gel. Do you feel like you loose anything by removing it? Wonder what you could make with it...

I'd save it in the freezer and dump it into soups and broths. Yeah. I was thinking the same: not down the sink! But then, I don't have 100+ tomato plants, like Dawn does. :D

Good idea Bon! I have been drying the skins and pulp left in the mill to make tomato powder with for seasoning. I suppose you could dry the gel, but that would take longer...fruit leather? Who am I kidding. I just want to grow it, somebody else needs to cook it!