Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Pumpkin Lady <pumpkingal@clearwire.net>]

TradingPostPaul wrote:

> We go a step further and grow only heirlooms, preferably the best tasting
> Italian heirlooms we can find. 

Find me an heirloom that does as well in my area as 
heatwave(which is a hybrid) and I'll switch. I'm still 
looking for one. I give space to between 5 and 10 different 
heirloom tomatoes every year. I suppose I could try to 
unhybridize heatwave as well, then it would at least be OP. 
Taxi is the ONLY thing that even comes close and I grow as 
many of them as I do Heatwaves every year. Heatwaves are 
larger and my perception is that the plants produce more, 
but I haven't been as good about record keeping to prove 
that as I should have.

Anyone have any guidelines for how many plants you should 
grow out to do that? I know it's theoretically possible, but 
I don't think I've ever seen it stated 3 plants, 5 plants, 
25 plants, whatever you start with. I know you just don't 
save seeds from the ones that don't show the traits you want 
and you pull out the bad tasting ones entirely if they 
occur, but I'm not sure how much space I need to allot them 
to grow out and weed from for stability.

Morgan