Are they in containers? If they are in the ground, I wonder why they would dry up so drastically in that short time? I am wondering if this problem might not be something else like blight. If it is, they won't get better and you would do best to pull the plants and let the tomatoes you harvest ripen indoors.

George
Tahlequah, OK

Okiebaker,

I was thinking the same thing that George said, which is that one week without moisture would't kill in-ground plants so quickly unless something else is going on. (Unless, perhaps, you have almost pure sand for soil and it drains incredibly fast.) I watered my tomato plants on Wed. and that was the first moisture the plants had received in about 10 days, and not a one of them had died or even looked close to dying.

If there is not one green leaf left on the plants, they probably will not bounce back, recover and grow. However, I have had some behave like yours, and I just watered them and fed them with a water-soluable fertilizer and they began putting out new leaves, so I think doing that is worth a try. I've also cut some back by 50-70% in July and then watered/fed them and had them bounce back with new growth within a week or two and those plants went on to flower and set fruit in the fall.

If your plants have some green foliage left, removing the dead foliage may help revive them. Cutting them back may help too, but if you do that, try to leave some of the limbs intact. If all the dead growth is at the lower part of the plant, you don't want to cut off all the green growth above because that will make it hard for the plants to conduct enough photosynthesis. However you could selectively remove some branches and allow others to remain. Be sure to remove all that sunscalded fruit too.

It isn't too late to buy transplants of fall tomatoes to replace those. Some big box stores in OK have had transplants for fall in recent weeks, and both Duck Creek Farms and The Tomato Man's Daughter in the Tulsa area have been selling fall transplants. Both have websites and you could check there to see if they still have tomato transplants.

I'm sorry you lost the plants. With it happening so quickly, I suspect a plant disease or spider mites played a role in their demise. If you're in a part of Oklahoma that has had the nonstop Excessive Heat Warnings and Heat Advisories, that hot weather probably played a role in the plants' demise. There's been tons of research about the effect of high temperature/humidity on the pollination and fertilization of flower blooms, but I've never seen research that shows if high heat indexes harm the plants more than just plain old high temperatures would.

Dawn

I have seen things this year that I have never seen in the past. I have okra leaves that just die right in the middle of an otherwise healthy plant. It is like they are being poisoned with something. Since okra loves heat, I don't know how that could be blamed.

I have tomatoes that have been watered but look like they are dying from neglect, and it seems to hit very quickly. I think I have only one kind of squash that hasn't been touched by SVB and it isn't as healthy as normal. It has been a strange gardening year. I have tomatoes that still have curly leaves, but I just reach through and harvest those big tomatoes. I have had very good production, but I think it will be a short season.

We have had days and days of high temps and high humidity. I know that plants don't feel heat index numbers, but it seems that the conditions that create that heat index certainly does bother the plant. I was not at all bothered by the forecast this week of heat index to be between 100-105 all week, because that was lower than what we had been having. I will be having company soon from Nevada so I hope the humidity drops some or they will be miserable here.

I have tomatoe plants that look like they can't make it through the week, but then when you look at the top of the plant, it is covered with blooms. Very, very ugly plants, but still producing. I have some pepper plants that have strange looking leaves, still green, but dark and bumpy looking. Other leaves look normal and they are pumping out the peppers. Some things just look like they have had more sun that they needed.