Well, I'm waiting for the stabilization, Humi. We had temps in the low 50s last night. Today is about 80. Tomorrow comes our next full week of mid 90s from what I am told, nighttime lows in the 70s. Lol. I generally grow about three plants and that keeps me and my extended family in tomatoes from early July until September. If what you're saying is true, it might be a salsa and sauce canning year. I usually only do pickles, grape juice and chow chow, but I have about 60-70 tomatoes that could potentially ripen all at once. Best find my Baba's old canning babushka, as it sounds like I might be busy.

One mystery solved! Yesterday we got to taste our first Cherokee Purple. Not bad at all! This plant is so productive, I already counted 23 huge tomatoes, and now I can see much more tiny ones higher on the vine.

This leaves us with Old German being the second mysterious plant. It has a bunch of green tomatoes, different color than this one, plain green. The description said it's not a heavy producer, and I've counted some 15 fruits on the plant so far.

While we were on out of town camping, Russian Queen decided it is time!

Haven't tasted it yet, but it looks beautiful!

Faux-Siberia delivers red tomatoes every day. They are getting better and better tasting!

Stupice surprised me with it's flavor. I really like it! Too bad it's not as early as I was hoping it to be... Well, I still like it!

Some bigger Sunrise Bumblebee are ripening.

And Cyril's Choice

It's so great to eat fresh tomatoes every day! I can get used to it!

Looking good, PK. As mentioned above, I'm growing a few of the same varieties as you, but behind your schedule a bit. So, hopefully we'll have some to try in a few weeks. Looks like your Cyril's are doing well, too. I'd be interested in how they turn out taste wise for you, because I have seed, and might want to try them again next year. Our Cherokee Purple is pumping out lots of fruit, but still green. Glad to hear you like Stupice, we have a couple plants, and was wondering how they taste as an early tomato.

We are going to have hot and dry weather here for the next week, so that might help getting the green fruit to color a bit. I have to get out there and fertilize, but am dreading getting out in that heat, I was just outside about an hour inspecting all the plots, and got pretty hot. Maybe I'll do that this evening..

I am in PDX and 9b I think... this year has just been very very odd. With the exception of a couple replacement plants my kids all went in their containers at the same time...and I am anywhere from just getting flowers to some with peach sized green fruit. I thought it was going to be a bumper crop year with how the weather was and things started...I planted out two weeks earlier than usual...and now things seem to be in stasis. Not to mention my Green Zebra has taken ill...

This time last year I had been picking handfuls of cherry tomatoes for weeks, and I just pulled my first fully ripe Sungolds today. This pic was last Sunday

and today

Only four more turing orange (literally hundreds of green ones) and not a single other plant has ripe Tom's. Lots and lots of green on some...some the size of peaches or larger, but green and hard...just flowers on others. 17 plants in total I think.

Picked my first tomato EVER yesterday! I'd have taken a picture... but I ate it instead, ha ha.

It's a Sunsugar yellow cherry planted as a transplant from the local nursery on May 28th. I think another should be ready today. It'll be a miracle if that one doesn't get eaten in the garden too. A girl needs some reward for weeding in the heat and humidity!

Picked my first tomatoes of the year yesterday. One ripe Sweet 100 and two mostly ripe. One almost ripe Big Beef. Deer have eaten the flower stems with tiny tomatoes and blooms of Brandywine Suddoth, no tomatoes left but a few flowers opening at the top.

edited to add: checking the labels I see it is Azychoka not B. Suddoth that has been eaten. There are many new flowers on it and I put netting around and over all my tomato plants last night. Several plants have blushing tomatoes. ;-)

This is just getting ridiculous. Dozens of huge beefsteaks just hanging green on the vine for weeks. Even the cherries have stopped ripening. Even Coyote, which is a currant size tomato and probably has hundreds of green fruit hanging right now--not one of these has turned ripe (although the bottommost truss, which is practically on the ground, is missing a few, so they might have ripened and gotten eaten by something).

Tell me about it.

What are the temperatures over there, gorbelly ?

Tomatoes need warm weather to ripen faster. Maybe in the cool they get bigger ??!!

Today, July 22, our high is forecast to be 69 F. Geeeez. Is this summer !

Sey

Not speaking for Gorbelly, but I imagine he's not far from me, Sey... and it's about 98 degrees here today, with the same predicted for the next three.

We're having a heatwave. ..a tropical heatwave.

Ugh

It has been a pretty hot here since the 4th, with half of the days over the past two weeks having temps well into the 90s (a couple days in the high 90s) and nighttime lows higher than 70 about 2/3s of the time. Not unheard of for these parts, but certainly hotter than usual. We have a 100 degree high predicted for this coming Monday :(

Maybe it's not temp, but if it isn't then I have no idea why absolutely nothing wants to ripen. Maybe I'll step up fertilizer application and see whether that helps, although once mature green, fert has little to do with ripening from what I understand. But maybe encouraging the rest of the plant to start producing more flowers and fruit will prompt it to start ripening or something. I don't know. I probably just need to practice more patience and mindfulness or something.

At least the peppers and eggplants look happy. And the squash, which I sowed pretty late, is starting to produce now and is growing like a weed. I planted vining types that are producing gigantic leaves. I think these are going to be monster vines. I've planted vining types before, but nothing that grew as crazily as these. The ones I planted next to the garage wall can climb up and take over the roof of the garage if they want, but the ones in the beds may Godzilla the place. I'm frantically thinking of ways to extend the trellis significantly without ending up with a sun-blocking wall o' squash.

Been plenty hot here in central Alabama, really makes 'em ripen, picked 84 pounds last week, not counting about 3 gallons of small varieties. Will be making Cherokee Purple juice this weekend. Plants so productive it's insane. Puskay, would you trade a few Sunrise bees for some Purple bees.

deadhead61 I didn't plan on saving seeds from my bumblebees. They're growing right next to other tomatoes, I'm afraid they're going to cross-pollinate. I've never done seed saving too, so I'm not sure I'm a good candidate for a trade...

Gorbelly, if it is in 70F to 90F range, that is perfect tomato ripening temperature. Sometime we just run out of patience. Also some tomatoes are slow ripening, case in point my SFT.:-) D

Look at the time line ! From walnut size to ripe tomato it takes almost a month. From small peach size to ripe takes almost 20 days.

Sey

Gorbelly:. Do you have many "mid-to late " varieties? I ask because the few German Striped, Brandywine, and Mortgage Lifters I had this year seem to take forever to ripen. The Big Beefs and Cherokee Purples were super fast in contrast.

I don't have any truly late varieties. I have Big Beef, Cherokee Purple, Black Beauty, Malakhitovaya Shkatulka, Franchi Red Pear, Black Cherry, and Coyote in the ground. Nobody is ripening. There's a Big Beef and 2 Malakhitovayas that are bigger than my fist, and they've been hanging big, green, and shiny on the vine for at least 3 weeks. I got 3 ripe Black Cherry tomatoes earlier this month when temps were in the 80s. Then nothing, just loads of green fruit at mature size, hanging there for weeks. I have trusses of tiny Coyotes that have been hanging green for 2-3 weeks.

Maybe they're waiting for the stinkbugs to come ruin them before they start to ripen.

I am going to try the Surround kaolin clay in the fall. Supposedly it makes stink bugs very uncomfortable and they leave and doesn't harm bees. Sounds like a miracle if it will work.

I provided an update on our tomato patch over on the "can you tell what's up with these tomatoes?" thread. It's a long post, so don't really want to re-type it. Guess I could learn how to copy-and-paste..

OK, here it is again, seems I can C&P after all..

Today I thought I'd go out into the patch and do an "inventory" of all 70 plants, and note the disease, if any, on the plants. So out to the patch in the midday heat I went with pen and notepad. It took me about half an hour, and cost me a drenched t shirt, but I got the job done. It was 90 out there, with no breeze at all, so very uncomfortable.

After checking each plant, I counted about 1000(!!??) various size of fruit, most of them very small, but there were quite a few tennis ball sized mater's, like on the Aunt Ruby's, all the Brandywine's, Watermelon and Gordost Sibiri, to name a few.

The most prolific plants were cherry and Roma sized varieties, which makes sense. The plants with the most fruit were: Chocolate Cherry, Mr Bruno, Yellow Pear, Russian Queen, Jaune Flamme, Amur Tiger, Mischka, Stupice, and San Marzano. The leading plant in the clubhouse, with 62 tom's, is the Chocolate Cherry, with a Mr Bruno in second with 52.

The most stingiest plants were the pink and yellow Brandywine's, Red Calabash, Dr Wyche Yellow, Lemon Oxheart, Great White, Mr Stripey and Striped Roman, with about 10 or less fruit per plant. Other than the SR, all the other plants are at least 4 feet tall, with some over 5 feet. Don't know if they're not setting more fruit because of the heat or what. But, from what I've read, Brandywine's are notorious for not being too productive. Oddly, though, the black BW has put out about 20 fruit.

My lone Tomatillo plant is about 4' tall, with dozens of blooms, but apparently no fruit developing. Is it true you need more than one Tomatillo plant or variety to cross pollinate, since they don't self pollinate?

I also noted the disease progression on the plants, and there are a few varieties that seem to be more susceptible. These are Yellow Pear, Amur Tiger, San Marzano and Aunt Ruby's German Green. There were some with a medium amount, and those are Russian Queen, Paul Robeson, Mr Bruno, and Lemon Oxheart. The rest of the plants are looking relatively healthy after being in the ground about two months. It would seem mulching, and pruning off low branches has helped. I've also sprayed, but mostly only the ones that start showing some disease.

Next task is that the plants need to be fertilized, that might help get the bigger varieties going, I hope. I've been dreading doing that out in this heat, but will prob do some this evening.

Also, after setting up my second perimeter fishing-line fence about a month ago, it does not seem that we've have any more deer incursions since then. So, if I can keep the disease pressure down, we ought to have a nice harvest this year. I guess with a 1000 tom's now, that's a real good start. Unfortunately only a couple of plants have any fruit that are breaking color: Jaune Flamme and Purple Russian. So, let's get with it guys!..

My tomatoes are doing well...lots of fruit set (some are huge in size) but not a lot of ripening yet. I've eaten a handful of SunSugar cherries. Our average temps have been 26-28C or 78-80F.

Hey folks, I found an archived copy of the Tomato Timeline in the Wayback Machine, took a screenshot, and put it up on an image sharing site. I also put the link in a new post so that people searching for it in future wouldn't have to scroll through hundreds of responses to find it.

Well, well, well....I've finally got a blushing tomato. And it's Mr. Stripey. Lol. I'm almost tempted to pick it a little early so no evil befalls it. Mr. Stripey saves my faith in the science of tomato production, and I was going to pull it earlier in the season.

Mixed news weekend. First Cuor di Bue tomato started turning color! I was super excited, and then I saw a big nasty green caterpillar chowing down on one of the Marzano plants. Later learnt it was a hornworm. Damn thing ate a bunch before I got rid of it. Disgusting. Does this mean, where there was one, there will be more to come? I checked the plants pretty thoroughly and didnt see any others. Should I go and buy BT and spray? Or I will have to just check daily and murder disgusting worms?

Hornworm moths don't lay masses of eggs. Just one or two here and there. For smaller, more numerous caterpillars, I would spray Bt, but for hornworms, I'm too lazy to go through all that trouble. I check plants daily for their distinctive frass (poop) and tell-tale eating patterns (leaflets eaten as though someone came by and snipped them off), then just pick them off when I find them. Of course, if you have a ton of plants, spraying might be less time-consuming than going through all your foliage with a fine-toothed comb.

Thanks Gorbelly. and yes its as if somebody snipped off leaves and a few branches! Very disturbing after so much time and effort invested. Massive ick factor with picking them though - not a fan at all of creepy crawlies. I only have a total of 7 tomato plants, so I guess I dont need to run out and buy the BT. Will keep it handy for future seasons if I see it somewhere in the garden store(s).

The other thing about hornworms and not spraying is that while they can be destructive, and sometimes difficult to locate, they are also a prime breeding vector for parasitic wasps. If you see a hornworm, you can choose to either move it or kill it, but if it has the white cocoons on its back, don't kill it, just move it away from your plants. Bt removes the option for encouraging these beneficial wasps.

Well...here she is. The first one of the season, weighing in at a meager .25 lbs. Lol

The closest that I can get : SFT

And some Cherokee Purples

Sey

ss1114 - BT has a limited shelf life...maybe 2 years tops if kept out of the heat so keeping it around for future seasons will be risking its effectiveness. I use it quite a bit mostly on brassicas like Broccoli, Cauliflower, Cabbage, and Brussels sprouts to combat cabbage worms. I use a 16 oz. bottle a year between spring and fall brassicas and occasionally on tomatoes, sweet corn, and peppers.

It is only effective on hornworms when they are still small. Once the hornworms get to pinky size BT won't help. Usually I only get one hornworm infestation a year but there are usually multiple (3-6) that are laid and hatch at the same time. Only once have I had a hornworm that had the parasitic wasps cocoons .

It has been a strange year for tomatoes for me. I got 2 distinct fruit setting periods on my plants. Early May thru June 8 I got about 150 fruit set on 5 plants. Only about 20-25 of those have yet to ripen. From June 9 to June 27 the heat hit early with highs in the 90s and lows in the 70s and zero new fruit were set in that time period. Then we had a 5 day cool spell and the plants set at least another 50-60 fruit which are starting to get some pretty good size to them now...not as big as the first flush yet but some in the 1/2 lb. range with at least 2-3 weeks to go before they start to ripen.

We are having another cooler period now and the plants are still flowering so they may try to set some more. I think I will probably pick off any new fruit at this point so that the plants put all of their energy into the second flush.

To revisit the hornworm issue, I guess the prevalence of parasitic wasps is regional. Here in E. Tn. we must have a fairly good population. This is an area heavy in both tobacco and commercial tomato production, so maybe the numerous tobacco hornworms offer more opportunity for the wasps. I get about a 50% infected rate. Here's the one I found this morning, a dead honworm covered in hatched cocoons...

Also from this morning, another personal best...

That's a Rose. 799 g., or 1 lb 12 1/4 oz. Definitely the largest tomato I've had in any garden.

I know many areas of the country are having an odd year, and although it's been dry and crazy hot, I guess here we can't complain at all.

Picking and eating. First of the tomatoes ripening on Brandywine Suddoth, Big Boy, Stump of the World. Umm, good to have garden tomatoes again.

Well, I have a few black cherry tomatoes trickling in every day now. I only have the one plant this year, though. Saw a lower truss on coyote starting to blush yellowish. Bigger tomatoes aren't showing much movement on ripening, though.

I'm glad everyone is starting to get some tomatoes coming in now. For me here in E. Tn., August is just about here, and the diseases will soon conquer my garden.

This has certainly been the year of the 'Rose' for me. Really, most of the larger varieties have produced well, and have come in huge sizes - including this 707 g (1 lb. 9 oz.) Striped German picked this morning...

But nothing I've ever grown approaches this 2 lb. Rose...

Finally got a ripe tomato larger than a cherry!

Malakhitovaya Shkatulka. Weighed in at 276g/9.7 oz. Even though it was the first fruit and we've had a lot of rain lately, it was a satisfyingly intense tomato. A good, acidic backbone, with nice, full sweetness toward the bottom of the tomato, and that herbal/spicy quality that GWRs have. I think it could have stood to ripen for one more day and would have been sweeter that way. Texture was excellent and juicy. Minimal radial cracking, despite really erratic rain and multiple big rain dumps over the past couple of weeks.

Glad to see people eating some nice tomatoes. I finally was able to pick some roma and my first ripe Jet Star. The Sun Golds have also started producing in full force. It has been a pretty terrible tomato year for me. But that's ok.. last year it was WAY too many.

We have had very heavy rains for the past 3 days straight, I am worried for my plants. They have some septoria going on.

That's a beautiful tomato Gorbelly!

So excited to see my first 4 large tomatoes changing color this morning! A Brandywine, a Big Beef, and 2 Cherokee Purples.

ss1114, it's normal for fruits to get smaller as the plant sets more fruit. Also, if fruit sets in waves, the first few in each wave will be larger. And the first fruit on a truss is usually larger than the others. In my experience, adding more fertilizer if there is already enough to keep the plant healthy does not change this. Although fertilizer can affect overall size of fruit, it doesn't change the fact that later fruits on the plant and on the truss tend to drop off in size. Variety can affect how much this happens. Some varieties produce much more uniform fruit than others, and many commercially popular varieties and determinates meant for canning produce fairly uniform fruit.

Oh, and also, a lot of the largest tomatoes come from double/fused blossoms, which are much more common early in the season. So there's that, too.

I got my first ripe tomatoes few days ago. Very late this year. Picked these Rutgers and Black Krim today. They are big! I didn't think Rutgers got this large. Like gorbelly said these are also from fused blooms. That's probably the reason.

By the way, not too impressed with the color of Black Crim. Should be called Light Brown Krim.

Went on vacation and came back to a bunch of ripe tomatoes. I have several bowls of cherry tomatoes as well.

First Pruden's Purple is a whopper. This is destined for a BLT tonight.

ss1114: I have only fertilized once with tomatotone, a couple of days after the first fruit set.

I didn't catch this on the first reading. It's probably past time for you to fertilize again.

Grrr. I didn't notice my first Cherokee Purple was blushing, and a critter got to it first. :(

He also knocked off the tomato next to it, which was still green. But the bottom had turned white, so I'm hoping it will still ripen on the counter and not taste too bad.

As consolation, another Malakhitovaya Shkatulka came ripe, too, and the critters seem less interested in them. Which is good, because they seem to ripen overnight, and I don't seem to be getting a significant yellow blush on mine right now to warn me that they're ripening. Almost 15 oz. Very happy with the performance and taste of this variety.

Let the picking begin! Finally have ripe tomatoes with other blushing fruits waiting in the wings. Hope all you other folks with the "late to the party" season are starting to see some action.

Alright, yepper.

I am almost there I picked my first Better Boy 2 days ago, plus few SFT. My main crop will come from dark varieties and SFT. Cherokee Purple and Black from Tula are growing bigger. Need some warm temperatures to speed up the process. Amazingly my Siletz that were supposed to be early are way behind this year.

Sey

My first big tomatoes ever!

Brandywine:

Big Beef:

And one of two Cherokee Purple:

So exciting. I'm sorry I waited until this year to start a vegetable garden!

I planted my plants in May, and fruit didn't start ripening a couple days ago. I think my plants are slightly behind, but there were green tomatoes for about a month and a half. Next year, I'm gone plant a lot and hopefully they ripen in July, instead of August.