I have it. The name of the tomatoes currently in the seed starter trays is "Xina", and the seeds are available from http://www.green-seeds.com.

I will keep you posted on the performance of these new tomatoes, and as it stands, I'll be giving away a large number of seedlings in a few weeks. However, I'm not above selling a few if that should happen to be the way things work. It would defray the costs of the potting soil, seeds, fertilizer, etc., all very necessary expenditures in the quest for the "perfect" tomato variety for our tropical island.

As stated in the topic description, lettuce loves the tropics. It grows quickly, and goes to seed quickly, which is great for the lettuce, but bad for the kitchen table.

The experiment with the Burpee beefsteak tomato ended yesterday with only two fruits, neither of which made it to ripening. There was another beefsteak grown in a pot outside the garden which delivered a grand total of four fruit, and they were very tasty fruit at that.

Anyhow, my final conclusion based on the observations on the health of the plants and the tragic lack of fruit set, with all the blossoms merely falling off, is that this particular variety of Burpee beefsteak requires much cooler weather.

Every year gardeners turn their soil, add soil amendments, and then either plant their seeds or seedlings - but regardless of the year, the inevitable always occurs... Tomato seedlings appear as if from nowhere in the oddest of places. Well, not quite so odd usually. A few volunteer tomatoes in your garden beds are to be expected, but still others will appear in strange places.

I'm not going to go into a discussion of one variety over another.

Chinese cabbage grows really, really well in the tropics. In fact, it is the only vegetable for which there is a consistent supply of in the local supermarkets. (American Samoa)

Like many of the varieties of vegetables that I'm familiar with, this one is a variety that was developed by the University of Hawaii. It is tolerant to tropical-ish conditions, but still would prefer cooler temperatures.

Name: Kewalo
Type: Determinate
Seed: Yes/Open pollinated
Shape: Round fruit

This variety of tomato is doing very well right now in our garden. It is a prolific producer of round fruit, that I'm sure will taste great when they finally start to ripen.

I am considering saving seed for the purpose of replanting the seed immediately for seedlings to give to our gardener for commercial production. However, the gardener needs to 'fess up and start paying us our share of the sales of the produce from our lands. As it is, his pigs can't possibly be eating ALL of the crops, as he claims.