Moni, I understand your excitement - I got my first Early Girl tomato yesterday and I have a Lemon Boy almost ready. We've had several Tumbler tomatoes and a few Sun Sugar - we probably would have had some big tomatoes earlier but the hail ruined them. I have Chili, Banana, Sweet Pickle, and a few Jalapeno peppers so far - my Marconi and California Wonders only have blooms. I'm SO ready for that first big tomato slice that will completely cover a sandwich!

farmgardener - I'm waiting for the same kind you are, but until then, I have Tess's Land Race, Tumbling Tom, two Ensalada (saladette), one Cluster Goliath, and on big ugly catfaced hybrid. But they're coming soon.

....and a few Black Cherry and lots of Sun Gold. I can't wait for the big ones to get ripe.

But all I got is those two. All my other plants , cept the cherry maters have NONE! So disappointed.

Moni

Moni,

Hopefully your plants will bloom during this week's cooler weather and will set more fruit.

If the plants are forming flowers, but the flowers are dropping off the vine without forming fruit, I'd blame the heat and humidity. Otherwise, I'd suspect excess nitrogen. You've had so much rain there this year and I just have to think the rain has contributed to excessive vegetative growth. I also think there's a good chance lawn fertilizer used over the years before you bought that house might have built up a high nitrogen level in the soil. I know that you wouldn't overfeed your tomato plants with a high-nitrogen plant food.

Want to manipulate your plants into giving you fruit? Buy Green Light Super Bloom (12-55-6) plant food and feed it to them, ideally right now while the weather is cooler and milder and tomato bloom pollen is more viable. I saw Super Bloom ourside in the gardening section at our Lowe's on Monday....on a rack right by the flowering annuals and not inside on the fertilizer shelf.

If it isn't heat impeding pollination/fertilization and it isn't excessive vegetative growth, then I think the varieties don't like it here.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Super Bloom

Moni,

I am having the same issue with my big tomatoes. I have tons of cherries, a few tennis ball size fruits...but the yield on my larger tomatoes is depressing.

I have several (maybe 9 or 10 of my 18) that I am attempting normal sized tomatoes. Some have one or two fruits, some have a few. My Brandywine has none.

I blame the heat, because the plants seem otherwise healthy. I am out there shaking the cages daily now (sometimes twice daily, SHHH!), now that it has cooled down some.

I'm relieved to hear I'm not the only person with tomato issues. I bought my plants and they started blooming immediately after I got them home. I had about three tomatoes develop and then then something ate holes in them. I picked the tomatoes off and seven dusted. It's taken a while, but I have tomatoes again. It is only cherry tomatoes and nothing ripe yet. My plants in my old garden did this last year too. I finally got one crop in August. They never did continue to put on tomatoes like my dad's do. The outer skin was hard which I'm guessing is the high heat in which they grow.

Part of the problem is that large-fruited tomatoes tend to stop setting fruit once daytime highs are hitting about 92 degrees or higher and nighttime lows are 72 or higher. In my part of OK, we had those temps beginning in the second half of May. If you want to plant large-fruited varieties here and get good fruit set, you need to transplant large, healthy transplants as early in the gardening year as possible....preferably around the date of your average last frost, or earlier than that with frost protection.

Most of my large-fruited tomatoes had fruit on them by the first week in May and some had fruit by the first week in April (and I'm not including the purchased 'cheater' tomatoes in this discussion...they had flowers in Feb. and fruit the first week of March). Because my plants set fruit early, I've been picking tons of fruit, many in the 1 lb. and larger range. Since mid-May, though, fruit set on those same plants has been poor, but I expect for good fruitset to occur right now during this cool and mild week. If your plants don't set fruit before the temps get too high, then all you can hope for is a cool spell, like we have this week, or be prepared to wait until fall when temps fall back down into the right range.

Tomato plants that produce bite-sized tomatoes are not affected by the heat nor are most paste types. Regular tomatoes that set smallish tomatoes, say those that are smaller than 8 or 10 oz., also tend to keep setting in heat. That's why a lot of the recommended varieties for Oklahoma and other hot areas are hybrids that produce fruit in the 6 to 8 to 10 oz. range....because they actually will produce.

If you're in a very humid part of the state, high humidity worsens the problem. In a drought year with very low humidity, I still get fruit set on large-fruited plants at high temps, but in an average year with high humidity, I don't. The main problem with tomatoes this year is exactly the heat and humidity....we got too hot too early and many areas had heavy rainfall and correspondingly high humidities.

Dawn

Dawn

I am having the same problem as others the only tomatos producing are my small cherry type. What are some varieties that produce here in this oklahoma heat?

Charlie

Charlie,

There are several. Here's a few that come to mind: Arkansas Traveler (late season, but a good producer in August), Carnival, Celebrity, BHN 444, Ace, Better Boy, Big Beef, Beefmaster, Super Fantastic, Pik-red, Jet Star, Supersonic, Mountain Pride, Mountain Fresh Plus, Sioux, Super Sioux and Heat Wave (which probably has been replaced by Solar Fire or Solar something). Merced was a great one but it was discontinued.

Dawn