Good luck. Same problem here. The plants love it. The blooms don't. But as long as we keep them alive and healthy, they will come through for us in the end. ;)

Dave

Around 100F for the next few days here in central Va, what happened to early June? At least my tomatoes did have a chance to set loads of tiny maters before this hell hit home.

It's more the humidity than the heat for me here in MD. Dew point is in the 70's plus temps in the 90's. So basically if you walk outside you effectively just took a shower.

Pretty steamy here too but only yesterday was the first above 90F. A few forcast in the next 2 weeks.

I've been tapping the plants a couple times a day hoping to help. Not too much blossom drop so far but I am used to having larger plants and fruits by now.

Im new at planting tomatoes, this is my first year. What should i do to deal with the heat? I am going to water tomorrow early morning, anything else i should do to prevent damage to the blossoms?

Here is a link that might be useful: tomato pic

venusruiz,I know of nothing that you can do other than to mulch with light colored mulch (I use straw) to keep the Sun from scorching the soil. Watering in the morning would help a little.

They will set. Don't worry too much. You're quoting the maximum temp. The average temp is lower. We're going to see near 100 here and my plants are setting tons of fruit..

We've been 95 and over (as our daily high) for the last 3 weeks and I haven't set one fruit in that timeframe, despite copious blossoms. Lows in the mid-70s. So don't get too excited. Lucky for you, your temps will drop. I'm stuck with this until October...

I have actually seen around 8 or so tomatoes set fruit over the last 3 days. That's out of 59 plants. I have a lot of blossoms. I put some triple phosphate on them and they seem to like that. I will give them a little Superthrive today as they like that as well.

I had the same issue here in DE. I periodically misted my garden every few hours to cool down the blossoms this weekend. I haven't lost any flowers yet, and actually have mini maters coming out. Hopefully that did the trick!

I've had the same issue with the blossom drop and the weather. Just this weekend though some fruit set. It was great to see for the noob in me. Seems they were right and they will come around.

Good luck,
Vanessa

I did dusting with water too, and one of my sungolds got some serious leaf disease. But it's surviving. I'll just say I wouldn't do it again.

Misting is dangerous in my opinion and unless I had a rain barrel,I wouldn't attempt it. IMHO.

That being said,I am certain that the brown leaves will be here as soon as it gets really hot and humid (like it's not right now) as the plants mature. I get disease every year and just expect/deal with it.

Blossom drop from high temps is normal, it's natural, it's part of the plants physiology and the biggest problem with it is all the things folks try to do to fix it when it ain't broken. ;)

The "fixes" often cause more problems for the plants than the temps that caused it in the first place.

So let the plant do what comes naturally to it. It is working hard to stay alive and healthy. Trying to force it to fruit too only causes more stress for the plant. That only reduces production in the long run and leads to disease and pest problems.

Dave

~~~ So let the plant do what comes naturally to it. It is working hard to stay alive and healthy. Trying to force it to fruit too only causes more stress for the plant. That only reduces production in the long run and leads to disease and pest problems. ~~~

Good point but lets not forget that we are not talking about the true wild plants anymore either.

In general when not_over loved to death_our plants get put out earlier and kept later by being protected to varying degrees from weather, pests, disease, drought and given what we hope is optimal nutrition. Its natural to want and even expect more from these plants since they are being given a better shot than their wild cousins.

I kinda like the toothbrush idea. If the pollen is dead from temps it won't help but it sure looks like it should be helpful in humid situations.