Congratulations on your surprise, I am happy for you.

I started pulling plants today because they look like a lost cause. I do have a few that are blooming and setting fruit, but not many.

The Purple Hulls I had given up on after a small harvest have started blooming again.

I will start getting the garden ready for fall and winter.

Larry

I have a lot of small tomatoes, and lots of blooms. the vines look good considering this year. I had started several seeds for fall, and decided to put them out and see what happens. They are ok so far. They are not near enough to bearing. The small tomatoes are on the ones I put out in spring. I bet I haven't gotten a pound of tomatoes so far out of a couple dozen plants. It is very discouraging.
mo

Hey E,

That's wonderful news about your tomato plants. Congrats on having loads of tomatoes!

My plants are not loaded, but I have 3 or 4 plants...maybe 5...that have hung in there and survived, even though I stopped watering at the end of July and very little rain has fallen. Several of those plants have blooms although the plants themselves look pathetic, but may not set fruit successfully because our highs are still in the hundreds. The two surviving plants that produce bite-sized fruit, a SunGold and an Ildi, are producing ripe fruit although not in huge numbers. There's also a couple of okra plants and a handful of pepper plants that have survived being grown dryland style, but if I had any sense I'd just go pull them because they truly look awful.

Dawn

I'm Fr*&%&^ING over joyed YOU &*%^&^ and the horse you &%$#&ibfing. I hope you ^&%$* and then ^!@#**%^$4ing and your dog!!!

Erode, that's great! Congratulations.

Our tomato started producing as well, probably because some rain and cool weather couple of weeks ago...

here is one picture take this morning of the 4th of July tomato;

Another good news and surprise is that, two tomato and one eggplants, bitter melons planted in greenhouse as test, they too producing. I thought summer heat will kill them in greenhouse, but didn't instead they are doing fantastic.

-Chandra

ROFL

I'm so glad someone else brought it up first, because I wanted to say something so bad, but I didn't want to seem like I was gloating. :) I have TONS of tomatoes on about 25 plants. My biggest are slightly larger than golf balls. Have loads of watermelons, peppers and squash too. I had zero fruit set in spring. It was so weird. As soon as everyone here started pulling their plants, I started getting loads and loads of setting. We're very excited. Had one of the best watermelons I've ever eaten right from my own garden the day before yesterday. Very exciting for a first time gardener. ;)

FYI...the tomato plants that have set in major heat for me were Bush Goliath. They may not be the tastiest, I don't know, but those suckers are beasts. They will fight and fight to set fruit. I've got them in containers. They were purchased after the Norman hail/wind storm and were worth every single dime I paid. Each one has about 15 small tomatoes on them. Amazing.

TairaKL, Funny, because the Bush Goliath were the first tomatoes I ripped out of my garden. I thought they were totally worthless. If they did get ripe, they would split. I think I have one still standing and it has about 12 inches of green top growth and the rest is dead. I thought about pulling it yesterday. Mine are in the ground and had some shade.

My little plants are also recovering from heat stroke and I'm getting a few green fruits so far, too.

I have six Black Cherry which have survived being baked and attacked multible times by tomato worms & blister beetles. They're setting on fruit, albeit not a bumper crop. Most of our tomatoes appear simply to have endured too much to do much now.

George
Tahlequah, OK

PHJ as usual has me rolling.

I am really happy for all of you getting fruit!

I have a few very sickly vines left, a couple are blooming, but no tomatoes yet!

Jo

Taira, Bush Goliath set tons of fruit for us in the spring and they were pretty early. Their flavor isn't bad---just that of a typical red hybrid tomato. I've had varieties with better flavor, but also have had them with worse flavor. If you've grown it, Early Goliath is very similar but produces fruit a bit earlier and sets a tremendously heavy fruit load. My Early Goliath's were in the ground pretty early and we were harvesting tons of fruit from them before the end of May. About the time their first big harvest was finished (though they were setting more fruit even then), we were harvesting from Bush Goliath, and then from Goliath. I'm pleased with how the Goliath family (including the peppers) performed in a really tough year.

We had tons of fruit to harvest from April to July but not many since then due to the extraordinary heat. Anyone who is getting tomatoes now should feel free to talk about them, brag about them, etc. We all garden in differing weather conditions, and I am always happy for anyone whose weather is behaving more nicely than mine and who is getting fruit set!

Carol, Mine didn't split, but then yours probably had more rainfall in a week or two than mine had in their entire little plant and fruit lives. My plants held on and set fruit even after we had horrendous heat and drought in play.....I do think that the whole Goliath line is really strong and tolerates poor weather really well. However, Better Boy and Big Boy still beat them in the flavor category, at least as far as my taste buds are concerned.

Dawn

Soonergrandmom, isnt that strange how the same variety will do so well in one garden and not so good in another? So funny. Maybe they like the containers i put them in. Lol

Dawn, I'll have to try the other members of the Goliath family next year. You gotta love a plant that makes such a valiant effort in this weather. Speaking of, it was 70 degrees when I got up at 7, and if the neighbors could have seen me out there shaking all those plants, they'd have had a field day. Bet it was a hoot to witness.

Glad to hear Better Boys taste pretty good. I've got four of those left that I started from seed way back in March. They've got decent fruit set, so yeah, very exciting. My White Tomesol plants look great (shocking) but no fruitset. Don't know if those guys are going to set in time to get fruit. I love heirlooms, but I just don't know if they're going to work for me in this climate. I did pick up a few Bloody Butchers, Juane Flammee and Black Cherry plants from Lisa Merrell (spelling?) on July 14th and they've all got blooms, so we'll see what happens with those varieties. Next year, I think I'll try a few heirlooms, but just in case the weather is like this year, I'll go with some of the heat setting and early hybrids just to be sure I get some.

Taira

If you are trying the Goliath series, I would also recommend Cluster Goliath along with Early Goliath that Dawn mentioned. Those are the only two that really impressed me and both were early. I will probably give the others one more year and hopefully it will be a more normal year. Since I now know that Bush Goliath remains a small plant, I will probably put them in containers for their 2nd chance. I try to give most things two years to prove themselves.

I just ate half of a big yellow bell pepper with cream cheese stuffed down into it. It was sweet and delicious. I think I am going to have a lot more peppers. They are in all stages right now from new blooms to mature peppers. I lost a few plants but most still look very good. It is nice to be able to pass the pepper bin in the grocery and know that you have plenty of those in the garden. It's even nicer in the winter to know that you have bags of chopped peppers in the freezer and don't have to buy them when the price is high.

Guess I will just have to spend my dollars on the other food in the store that didn't do as well in the garden this year. I will have plenty of onions and peppers from this year, and still have salsa left from last years abundance, along with a few other things.

Although I didn't freeze much broccoli this Spring, we still have a few packages left. I had planned to start some this fall but when it was time to start seeds, the weather just didn't look like it was ever going to cool down. Now that it is probably too late, I wish I had started it.

My poor ugly pole beans that have looked awful for a month are trying to green up and bloom now. Such a crazy year.

My Early Girl set and produced right through the heat although the maters got pretty small. And now it has several small fruit again. I still have a few Suddeth Strain Brandywine fruit on the plant and one Better Boy yet to ripen. I am also still picking a few Black Cherries from the earliest ones I planted and have several coming on the later set plants--although all were seeded at the same time. Several other plants are blooming but I haven't looked closely enough to see if they have fruit. I am hopeful although to tell the truth, I've had so many tomatoes--two or three bushel probably--and put so many up to make salsa from when the weather cools that I can't complain if I don't get any more--although the people I've shared with would have liked more this year I am sure.

My Black cherry has done very well this year, the only year I have grown them, but I did not care for the taste. SunGold did very well and had a great taste. None of my larger tomatoes did well.

I have been trying to get by without fertilizers and sprays and think it is hurting my harvest. I used some liquid fish last year and I think it helped. I did however side dress the corn with a little 27-0-0 and got a fair harvest.

Soonergrandmom, I'll try that Cluster Goliath, too. Is that a cherry tomato? I guess the consensus this year is that small tomatoes and early tomatoes rule the day.
I'm really impressed with watermelons and peppers in this year's climate also. I've learned so much this year. Can't wait until next spring.

Taira

My Rutgers plant has several small fruit coming on, as does the Arkansas Traveler, so I may get some more this year if the frost doesn't show up in late Sept as it has in some years.

I planted some slow growing seedlings in late June...my "fall" tomatoes I suppose. The plants look much better than my spring tomatoes, but still no fruit set. The main stem of my sungold and red grape look awful, but they are still blooming and setting on the tips. What gets me is my dad in Grove has been harvesting a few slicers throughout the summer. And I grew many of those from seed, so they got the same TLC of my own until they were big enough to plant. I finally made a cage out of PVC pipe and bird netting over all of my tomatoes, and it seems to be keeping out the squirrels...not that there really is anything to get any more. There was a cardinal trapped in there yesterday morning that I set free.

Peppers have been flowering off and on, but no fruit set. My Clemson Spineless okra is about as tall as me, but no flowers. I do have a very good watermelon patch (Crimson sweet). They have spread out and are climbing the tomatoes, peppers, and through the fence to my neighbors. I've got several baby watermelons that I can't wait to sink my teeth in. Finally some success in this abysmal year!

Taira,

I love heirlooms too but it is a struggle to find heirlooms with great taste that also are heavy producers most years. Two heirlooms that produced heavily for me despite having to endure temperatures in the mid-90s when they were still small and trying to set their first fruit were Gary O Sena and JD's Special C-Tex. Both produced heavily despite the heat. Another heirloom that produced very, very well from plants set out in pots in mid-February (my best beat-the-heat plants this year were the ones planted earliest) was Red Beefsteak, also known as Ponderosa or Crimson Cushion. Many other heirlooms set fruit early, but didn't set much fruit after the real heat arrived in mid-May. Jaune Flammee' is another heirloom that set fruit really well. It is an heirloom that produces smallish orange fruit and it has great flavor. It still was setting fruit in July when I stopped watering the garden. Black Plum is another smallish-fruited heirloom that tolerates heat incredibly well. A lot of my favorite heirloom tomatoes, in terms of flavor, produce best in rainy years with cooler weather, so I will start seed of them in an El Nino year but not in a La Nina year.

Last spring, Carol and I both bought the Goliath collection of tomato and pepper seeds from Totally Tomatoes and I haven't even tried all of them yet because it was a lot of varieties. Of the varieties I did grow this year, all of them produced very, very well. The yellow bells were my favorite of all the sweet bells I grew. Both the plants and peppers were a nice large size, especially considering how dry it was.

I don't know what size fruit Carol got from her Cluster Goliath, but mine were a pretty decent size very early in the season, then a bit smaller later on. The fruit are bigger than a cherry---they were about 4 to 5 oz. each.

Carol, I'm glad you mentioned Cluster Goliath because I forgot to. I think the six Cluster Goliath plants I planted this year produced the most fruit per plant, except for all the bite-sized tomatoes. They also were early. I think they were earlier to ripen than Early Goliath.

It is such a crazy year. If I had time to be at home worrying about the garden, it would be making me nuts that I don't have a fall garden. Since I'm gone to fires and working on other fire business so much, I don't have time to let it bother me, but the remains of the garden look so pitiful that I can't bare to look at them when driving by the garden. I just turn my head and look the other way!

We still have tons of onions and potatoes, and I froze a lot of corn, green beans and some peppers, so at least we have some stuff from this year left in the freezer. I froze tons and tons and tons of peppers of all kinds last year, so stil have lots of them.

One SunGold has hung in there and set fruit all summer, although it is very small and very drought-stressed. A handful of other tomato plants in one row have some green foliage, but all the others died after I stopped watering. With no rain falling and me not watering, it is a miracle anything at all is still green.

If the drought continues through the winter, I'll put a lot of tomatoes in pots next year and maybe none in the ground. We are so dry here that the recovery of the soil will take months even after rain starts falling again in significant amounts. We need for about 25-26" of rain to fall here before the end of December just to get us back to our average annual rainfall of about 39".

I cannot imagine even attempting a garden next year, other than maybe tomato plants and pepper plants in pots, unless a lot of rain falls between now and then.

Dorothy, I hope the first frost is really late this year instead of early, although nothing surprises me any more. I think the earliest hard, killing frost we've had here came on either the 29th or 30th of September our first year here. I wasn't expecting that!

Tulsastorm, Plants are just that way. Even different plants of the same variety sitting side by side in the same garden may perform quite differently from one another. It also is possible your dad's plants had slightly better soil fertility or maybe had a more favorable location. My best-producing plants in the heat this year were some that had shade from a nearby tree that shaded them from about 1 to 4 p.m., giving them a little break from the worst of the afternoon heat.

Dawn