Awesome! I hope I am so lucky!

Good for you. I'm having a good year, too here in Michigan. The last few years have been lousy for many people. I hope everyone is having a good year for a change.

WTG Jannie - wish the season in the south had been 1/2 so good. Enjoy the fruits of your labor. :)

Dave

Hi Jannie,

Sunshine is intensely brilliant on LI and can bleach out plant labels in a few weeks. When I plant my tomatoes I make a map and a few copies of that map. I have one taped to the wall in my office, one in a file for reference too. In the past I've stashed a copy under my mattress. Anyway, the point is, that labels shouldn't be your only reference, make a pencil drawn map and tape it to the wall somewhere you can reference it quickly.

Glad to hear you've got a good crop, I do too, but this darn rain will cause a lot to split. Oh well, I'll be making lots of sauce this week.

T

Just wondering Trudi and Jannie - when did you plant? I'm farther north but supposedly on zone 5/6 divide in NW CT, I transplanted mid-June b/c of all the rain, Glaciers (early) are just getting ripe (but some splitting and green shoulders), the heirlooms I do have doing well are getting huge but no sign of breaking color.

Same with plum and pear tomatoes - tons of 'em, but all green (and 1 plum got moldy on the vine b/c the plant is so bushy - I haven't pruned it). Heirlooms are showing signs of early blight - 4th of July (which hasn't been productive) has been battling it all season and I would have pulled them except I do have 2-6 green tomatoes on each plant right now, with plenty of air flow.

I'm zone seven and usually transplant my tomato seedlings Mother's Day weekend.

Enjoy your harvest jannie, glad to hear your plants are doing good.

I ate my first ripe Mr. Stripey today and wasn't disappointed. With all the challenges this year I was afraid I'd never see a crop but I got lucky.

My sister has started calling me the tomato queen because my plants are doing so well with 60 to 100 fruit on each and three plants have started to ripen finally.

Isn't it great to see the "fruits" of your labor.

Trudi - we usually plant Memorial Day but it was so cold and rainy then we didn't even take the plants out of the greenhouse til then! More rain in June and the south end of my tomato rows were underwater. Dry (35% of average) in July but I nursed them through. Now we've had 150% of our Aug rainfall already (3" in the past 36 hours) so I think they're all drowning - will check Wed.

How are you doing? I saw some parts of NY got 10+" in 1 day!

The last couple years we had a blight and got very few tomatoes. This year was great. I ordered from White Flower Farms in Connecticut, figuring their climate is similar to mine-Zone 7. Planted them right after Mothers Day-used some organic compost in the soil and had the whole garden tilled. I remember three of the tomatoes were early developers, and three were known for large fruit. Two are green varieties-Mr Stripey and Green Zebra. I did a lot of weeding May June July even into August and I supplemented with watering in the early morning a couple times a week. The big rainfall we had Sunday didn't bother them-they were ready for a good drink. I figure we got about 5 inches where I live-Kings Park, north shore, western Suffolk county. All I can say is I'm happy with my crop after a couple of dismal years.

I'm not far from White Flower Farm, I believe they are solidly in zone 5b (I'm on the edge, between 5b/6a, right on border of Litchfield/Hartford counties).

I planted peas on Mother's Day this year - they rotted. Last year we had 90-degree weather in April followed by a Mother's Day killing frost that did in our blueberries. But transplanted tomatoes, seeded zukes and cukes and corn a couple weeks later and they did great (well, except the coons found the corn after we'd only picked 5 ears). I was picking cukes and tomatoes til late Sept - prob. would have had tomatoes after that but frost was predicted so I picked and pickled all the green ones.

The one heirloom I grew last year was Mr. Stripey - very prolific, we didn't have problems with blight, but just not to my taste. My cousin grew German Johnson and Cherokee Purple so I got some plants from him this year, I started Pink Brandywine. Not doing too well (except for the couple of plants that ended up in the old garden with the Glaciers). I didn't prep the soil well enough. Going to check tomorrow to see if they're underwater and if any of the 75 plants can be salvaged.

My cousin in Western New York about 500 niles from me, solid Zone 5, planted 6 or 8 tomato plants (in may (I believe). I talked to her on the phone and she said her p-lants are not producing well, but she gets a few tomatoes now and then for eating. Yesterday I picked 14 that were mostly ripe, stuck some in paper bags and gave to neighbors. I kept about a half-dozen for home use. I like to make a Caprese salad-tomatoes, basil (home-grown) and mozzarella cheese. Yum yum. Good on Italian bread with dressing too.

Sounds like some of you need to hill up your plants, We have to do that here. It helps so much when we get too much rain.

I planted my indeterminates in trenches thinking of last July when it was soooo dry. Plus this allowed me to plant them deep since they were so leggy by the time it dried out enough to plant in June. Didn't trench for the determinates but dug them deep too. That area drains better than the new area I trenched and amended (bathtub effect).

This July was even drier than last year (about 25% of average). But the rest of the year has been super-wet! We've already exceeded August average, though we didn't get as much rain as NY did last week.

So what do you do to survive extremely wet weather at beginning and end of season and dry as a bone in the middle? Hill and mulch everything and water like crazy that one month? I don't think I've ever seen a summer as wet as this one has been.

At least everything survived, though I had to pick off a lot of blighted leaves today and I think 1 fruit is infected too.

This is the best year I ever had. I planted 29 tomato plants this year, including 24 different varieties. I had so many tomatoes this year that I decided to sell them for the first time, and managed to sell 250 pounds. Plus my own family probably ate about 150 pounds so far, plus I gave away about 50 pounds, and maybe 350 pounds I threw away because they rotted on the vine or got over ripe or had sun scald or insect damage. However many of my plants, especially the one that make large tomatoes, are starting to shut down now for the summer and I pulled two of them so far. However the small and cherry tomato plants are still kicking them out.

Most of my big tomatoes split from a near foot of rain. Bummer as many were slated to go to MAGTAG, there are still several excellent maters outside so all is not lost. I've been taking seeds and making sauce these past few days.

Knock on wood, the couple of heirlooms that got mixed in with the Glaciers and planted in good soil haven't split or rotted. I've got a couple of fruit on 1 plant that are bigger than I can hold in my 2 hands, but no sign of ripening yet. Same with the plum tomatoes - tons of them, getting bigger than I thought they were supposed to (good 1-handful) but no color break. The only color break I've had has been the Glaciers, the cherries (which are planted in poor soil so not productive), and a few yellow pear. i tasted a couple yellow pear yesterday that had split - no taste. Though my cousin says theirs are sweet. I figured it's all the rain.

"Sounds like some of you need to hill up your plants"

What does that mean?

Hilling means rather than digging and setting deep, dig a shallow hole, put the plant in, then mound dirt around the stem in a "hill".

I was mistaken - I went out this AM after posting and found one of the huge heirlooms *is* starting to break on the bottom! I'm so excited, can't wait to taste that baby!