If they have several blossoms, I would leave them through the end of next week. If no tomatoes starting by end of next week then you might be out of luck unless they are smaller varieties that mature more quickly.

I don't think it is too late at all. Most of us will not see our first hard freeze until November, so fruit that sets now has a good chance of maturing.

It has been too hot. Temperatures over 95 can kill pollen and/or impede pollination in other ways, and temperatures sure have been over 95 this week. However, as soon as the cold front arrives, the temperatures will drop back into a more normal range and the pollen should be fine, and pollination and fertilization should occur.

Fall tomato success is highly variable from one year to the next because of the weather. Some years I don't harvest my last tomatoes until late November through mid-December, and other years it gets colder earlier and they're done by the end of October.

I think it is worth leaving the plants there and giving them a chance to produce, unless garden space is tight and you'd rather plant a cool-season crop there. So, my ultimate advice is to do what feels right to you and what makes you happy. I make a lot of garden decisions based on instinct or intuition and it rarely lets me down.

Dawn

I have some small fruit and a fair amount of blooms, I plan on leaving mine and making pickled green tomatoes with the small fruit about frost time. If I needed the space I might do differently. Nothing else is doing any good anyway, even looks like my sweet potatoes will be a flop.

Larry

I've got greenies on my cherries, and on my Bush Goliath, so I'm hanging in there for now. This week hasn't been great, but they had already starting setting way before that. I have got SunGold, SunSugar, Chocolate Cherry (I know, not very good, but this plant has exhibited great fortitude against heat, bugs, you name it and they are at least better than the grocery store tomatoes), Juliet, Black Cherry, Big Beef, and Better Boy. I may get some on New Big Dwarf, we'll see.

See ya round the forum!

Susan

Ok guys, here's a question for ya...
What would you recommend to a person who planted a few Early girls in 5 gal buckets a few weeks ago? They're about a foot tall now. Is there a way to keep them going and get tomatoes w/out the use of a greenhouse???
Am I throwing effort after foolishness, as my grandad would say?

Hope this question is appropriate here, not wanting to hijack someone's thread...

Cowpea,

We're pretty tolerant of hijacking threads here on this forum. It seems like we meander from one thing to another pretty easily....

I do what you are proposing most years, but in a container larger than a 5-gallon bucket. With 5-gallon buckets for fall/winter tomatoes, there is not a lot of soil 'insulation' around the roots, so the plants tend to get hit hard earlier by cool temps in a 5-gallon bucket than the do if they are in a larger container. Still, you can do it.

The way I extend the harvest is to keep my container-grown tomatoes and peppers on the concrete apron of the garage with a south-facing wall directly behind them on fall days where they benefit from the heat that reflects off both the concrete itself and the metal wall of the barn-style garage. On any night when there is any chance of the temperatures going below about 45 degrees, I drag them inside the garage at night, then drag them back outside in the morning. Technically, you can leave them out there at a lower temperature than that--perhaps down to 39 or 40 degrees (more on that in a second), and they won't freeze, but getting that cold at night really slows them down.

The reason I say 39-40 degrees is because in the right conditions, frost can form at up to 38 degrees and sometimes even 39 degrees and frost can damage or kill your plants even though the ambient air temperature remains above 32 degrees. That is a lesson I learned the hard way after moving here.

Now, here is where it gets tricky. Much depends on how warm you can keep them at night. Our barn-style garage is really big (30' x 40') and extremely well-insulated. So, I can drag them into the middle of it so they are far away from the walls, doors and windows, and they won't freeze in the garage until the outdoor temperature hits 18 or 19 degrees. I can prevent that, if I choose, by putting a couple of layers of floating row cover over them as soon as I drag them inside, or by throwing a blanket over them. Both of those help hold in the heat and slow down the rate at which the plants and pots cool down once they are removed form the sunlight. (They are caged, so the blanket can sit on top of the cage and not break the limbs. I wouldn't throw a heavy blanket over them if they were not caged.)

This will be my first fall/winter with a greenhouse because we didn't get the plastic cover on it and start using it until mid-winter last year when I was starting seeds for spring. I did learn, just from keeping seedlings in there at night, that my greenhouse gets really hot on sunny winter days (up to 120-140 degrees on bright sunny days) and, without a heater running, gets just as cold on cold nights as the outdoor air (and I knew this before we built the greenhouse). So, to overwinter tomatoes in it, I'll either have to run a heater at night, which I think will cost more than it is worth, or have the container plants in it during the day and still take them into the garage on cold nights. I do have 50% shade cloth on the greenhouse, so it shouldn't get as hot this winter as it did last winter before I added the shade cloth to it. Most of my overwintering tomato and pepper plants are in molasses cattle feed tubs which are roughly the size of a whiskey half-barrel, so moving them is not easy. I do have a few pepper plants in 7-gallon containers.

I like to keep a couple of plants going as late into fall and winter as I can just because of the challenge of it. Most years, with plants in pots, I can harvest tomatoes and peppers until at least January. Whether they are worth the amount of trouble it takes to get the harvest is another question. To me, it is worth it. However, I am home all day and can drag the plants inside and outside as needed. If I worked and had to leave the house early in the morning, I might not think it was worth it from the viewpoint of having to drag them outside very early while it still is cold.

I'll say this about overwintered container tomatoes: after late October, between the lower temperatures and the shorter daylength, any fruit that forms will take forever to enlarge and ripen, so I have the best look with cherry types and less luck with larger tomatoe which just take forever to ripen in cooler temps. The flavor also is not the same as it is when it develops in hotter weather. Still, I think the flavor and texture of fruit from my own overwintered plants is better than the flavor and texture of grocery store tomatoes. With peppers, there is a big drop in the heat content of hot peppers and I believe they really do need the heat to produce hot peppers. However, if you can keep them alive over the winter, they will flower and set fruit earlier in spring than brand new plants because of their larger, more mature size.

I consider gardening to be just one big life-long experiment where I get to try all kinds of little experiments to see how things work out. The results can vary wildly from year to year, and that is part of what makes it interesting. Never be afraid to try something. That's how we all learn exactly what we can or can't do as well as whether the things we can do are worth the time and effort it takes to do them.

For me, having a few green things in winter time helps keep me sane, so I do it every year. If you find that trying to keep them from freezing requires so much work and worry that it stresses you out, then that's the time to abandon the experiment.

Dawn

Wow Dawn, thanks bunches!!!!

You've given me some great info and lots to think about!
I can set them up on the south side of my house and drag them in and out of the garage.
Do you think that at this point I should transplant them into something larger, like a muck bucket? Or, should I maybe just set the 5 gal buckets down into muck buckets and surround them with something like hay?

Thanks for the point towards cherry tomatoes for next fall!
This is fun:-)

Ronni

Ronni,

You're welcome

It is your option whether or not to transplant them into the muck bucket. If they were mine, I would do it. I grew many tomato plants in 5 to 7 to 10 gallon buckets and gradually have upsized to larger containers and have found the plants remain much happier and produce better in larger containers.

If upsizing is not feasible from a financial standpoint, because of course the soil-less container mix is not cheap, it won't hurt to leave them in the 5-gallon buckets. They'll still grow and still produce tomatoes, but because the root system will be smaller, it may freeze more easily or dry out more easily on windy days. You know, to turn it into an experiment, try one or more in a larger container and one or more in a 5-gallon bucket and see what works best for you. That's how you'll learn what works for you.

If you trannsplant them into the muck bucket, be sure to drill a lot of drainage holes in the bottom of the bucket. If you place the 5-gallon container inside the muck bucket and surround it with hay, be sure there's 4 to 6" of hay on the bottom betwee the 5-gallon container and the muck bucket so that water can flow through the drainage holes in the 5-gallon bucket and go down beneath it or the water just backs up into the holes if the bucket sits right on top of the bottom of the muck bucket with nothing to separate them.

It is fun, and what I like about overwintering plants is that it kinda makes me feel like I am "beating" the weather at its own game sometimes.

Dawn

Ok Dawn, I accept the challenge!
Since I only have 3 plants, think I'll keep 1 as is; place one 5 gal bucket in a muck bucket and surround all sides/bottom with hay; and replant the 3rd into a muck bucket w some soil-less mix.
Will let you all know how it goes.

Truly enjoying this!

Ronni