I would give it a little bit more time. We have had a lot of rain here in OK and unusually cooler weather. They should start bouncing back any day now. Best of luck

Patty,

If the tomato plants have survived the rain thus far, they're probably going to be OK.

My plants have survived one rainfall this year of 12" that fell in one day at the end of April, and another 6" that fell over a period of a few days after that, so if they can survive 18" in about a 2-week period (and they all did), then yours should survive as well, as long as they are not actually sitting in standing water.

One reason so much rainfall makes tomatoes look so bad is because the water literally clogs the root system, thereby preventing the plants from taking up nutrition from the soil. So, even though your plants are well-watered, they are starving for food. My plants that were planted at grade level suffered the most and they have just begun to get slightly better coloring and show new growth in the last 48 hours.

Depending on what kind of nutrients you had in your soil and also depending on what levels of nutrients were there, the heavy rainfall could have leached out a lot of the readily available nutrients. You can counteract this by feeding your plants a water-soluable fertilizer (I know they don't need the water, but they need the food) like Liquid Seaweed or Fish Emulsion, compost tea, or a chemical product like Miracle Grow for tomatoes. To do so, you don't have to water heavily--just mix up the fertilizer as the package directs and apply it to the soil in the immediate vicinity of the tomato plants.

In 2007, we had similar tomato problems resulting from very heavy rains in April, May and June and I finally fed my poor yellowish-purplish foliaged tomato plants with Miracle Grow from a watering can and they perked up within 24-36 hours.

However, if your garden soil currently remains excessively wet and has that soured smell of soil that has been too wet too long, your plants' survival chances drop.

The plants I had in raised beds, by the way, did not show exactly the same symptoms as those planted at grade level. The plants in raised beds didn't grow much during the rainy period, but they did not get the discolored foliage. Now that their soil has dried out some and they've had sunshine, they are growing like gangbusters.

Sometimes, all you need is a little patience. If your plants aren't showing any improvement at all by the end of May, then I'd probably be worried.

As for the early tomatoes, this just isn't a year in which there's going to be a lot of them if you are in an area that's received heavy rainfall and had excessively cloudy days. The only ripe tomatoes we've had so far have been from plants in containers which, of course, drain better than in-ground or raised beds do. However, we do have large fruit on some plants and many more blossoms opening this week, so I expect we'll have a nice harvest any way---just not a particularly early one.

Dawn