How did your tomatoes do this season?

tlmcca · October 14, 2022

My experience was absolutely horrible. I planted two each of three heirloom varieties: Black Cherry, Delicious and Mrs. Maxwell's Big Italian. These have been my go to varieties for several seasons and have always produced more fruit that we, our neighbors and the various critters could eat.

This year, however, was an almost total disaster. Only the Black Cherry produced fruit that generally ripened on the vine. The other two produced no more than two dozen! I'm blaming the excessive heat due to climate change for most of this. We are just recently getting temps below 85 degrees required for ripening. I'm ripening a dozen or so at a time in a box with a banana but even these are bland in taste rivalling those in grocery stores.

So, how well did you do?

Also, if you experienced the same excessive heat issue do you have any ideas for mitigating the problem?

Thanks,
Terry

PaulF · October 14, 2022

My full report will be coming soon since a hard freeze is in the near forecast. Mitigation for less than stellar year? That is called,"just wait until next year."

biscuitridge · October 14, 2022

My year was great!! I grew 3 tomatoes that were heavier than the current world record that is also mine,so I certainly can't complain.

Guarimn · October 14, 2022

I'm in 7b. The heat over here wasn't that oppressive.

I grew about 5 or 6 plants early on: Black Prince, Red Reif heart, Black Krim. The heart produced a lot of huge fruit which were mostly eaten by critters. The other plants grew strong at first and then something, not sure what exactly(got rid of the spider mites so it wasn't that. Maybe not enough or too much water. Or perhaps it was the heat. I can not tell), stressed them out. The plants hung on for a while and later fruit wasn't very delicious when it ripened.

In July I planted about 13 dwarfs, a couple cherries, and a small fruited variety. Plants looking very healthy. Still waiting on a handfuls of large, small and medium fruit. Keeping my fingers crossed

D.J. Wolf · October 15, 2022

My season was so so. Rainfall was well below average, and very spotty. I don't care how much you can irrigate, nothing beats natural rainfall IMHO. That said, it seemed wetter than it actually was, and in hindsight I should have been watering deeper/more frequently than I was probably. Temperatures were also all over the place, I would guess that if you averaged things out, it was overall cooler than normal. That said, hitting upper 90's for several days in April and again in May didn't help anything. I picked everything the 7th and 8th, the morning of the 8th was a heavy frost/freeze event that would have ended the season anyway. A full 3 weeks before last year.

Overall, not a failure of a year, but not as good as last year. Both overall production and individual fruit sizes and weights seemed down this year. The two bright spots were the Marzano Fire and the cherry tomatoes. Marzano Fire production was probably 65% of what I anticipated, and cherry tomato production was at or over expectations. By the middle of September I was almost tired of eating cherry tomatoes lol.

habitat_gardener · October 15, 2022

Nematodes and heat waves! Daily highs above 90F for nearly all of July to September, with about 9-10 days a month over 100F for June-September. I haven’t been rotating crops, and planted mostly nightshades in the current community garden plot for 3 years, so the nematodes were bad this year. The whole bed of dwarf tomatoes, almost all the determinates, and most of the OP indeterminates produced little or nothing.

Successes:
Polaris was the best tasting, but I got only a few, mostly smaller ones. I haven’t pulled it yet, but the healthy Woodle Orange plant right next to it produced no tomatoes and had lots of root-knot nematodes.

Benevento F1 was great! I got a nice crop of large, tasty striped tomatoes.

Purple Boy F1 was the most productive of the very tasty varieties.

Picus F1 was a fairly productive paste, nice and dense.

Start F1 produced a lot of surprisingly sweet but tiny tomatoes.

Yana was a very productive red determinate! Lots of small red tomatoes that were edible but would not win any taste tests.

Yak54 · October 15, 2022

I grew 11 varieties this year and most did pretty well with productivity down a bit from my best years but still decent. The worst producer this year was Lucky Cross which only gave me 17 tomatoes from the plant and that is compared to 30-35 tomatoes in better years. On the more productive varieties there were 64 tomatoes from the AGP plant which was a new one for me this year and most of the tomatoes were rather small at only 6 or 7 ounces. Not what I was expecting and I'm wondering if this was true to type ? My Dester plant did well producing 51 tomatoes. And then there was the King Kong plant which only produced 20 tomatoes but 7 of them were 2 lbs or more. This plant came from seed I received from Farmer Shawn in "Carolyns' Last Seed Offer" and I probably won't grow it again cause the taste was not up to what I'm used to. My Brandywine Cowlick's produced 37 tomatoes which is up from the 14-15 fruit this variety has produced for me in the 4 previous times I've grown it. Flavor wise Cowlick's, Dester, Indian Stripe, Polish, SOTW and Lucky Cross were the best tasting for me but my taste buds were assaulted at about the peak of my season with Covid for about two weeks.

KarenO · October 16, 2022

Long gold spring has been balanced out by a long warm dry fall here on Vancouver island. Busy summer here with about 325 plants altogether including the smaller dwarfs.
Enjoyed some new cherries from Fred at Artisan most especially Lucky Bee which I think is just excellent with a very sweet and complex flavour. Golden cherrywine is delicious as well and my plants are still blooming here on October 15.
I was satisfied with the progress of My own projects and I am happy to be able to introduce two new beefsteaks- Cowboy and One trick pony and a new Purple Heart all regular leaf For a change from my potato leaf tomatoes.
Three new dwarfs from the short and sweet project are stable and will join sweet baby Jade. Those are Emerald City, Yellow Brick Road and Ruby Slippers.
A venture into anthocyanin has produced some interesting results including a potato leaf bicolour heart with a nice dark cap of antho on the shoulder and a white bicolour beefsteak was a nice surprise. Early days mist Definitely but it was encouraging to find some flavours we enjoyed.
I still have a few plants in the garden and some small dwarfs going at this time in mid October. I’m heading south soon so I’m excited about that.
All in all a good year for me and lots of planning in the works for winter and spring.

KarenO

Volvo · October 16, 2022

Okay Karen i shall also add to the thread

..
Although our season for our neck of the woods is Autumn /Winter due to our harsh Summers i was a tad late planting out as i wasnt going to this year but Missus insisted due to the cost of Tomatos and Cukes so planted out later than i should .
Heirlooms i planted out were Mt Athos and Polaris, the Polaris turned out a Red variety , not that it mattered as taste was there .
Heck of a long growth for Tomatos to ripen with most going well over 120 days easy .
April till now !! thats quite a spell ey..
The Polaris came from Ukraine and some grandmas throwing which were purchases as seedling by the better halfe just see how they taste .
Do have seeds in my collection but in all honesty i didnt feel like a big variety this year so settled with what i had.
Both Mt Athos and Polaris grew all sizes and fairly marked most fruits were and did have to share with the bugs as i dont like spraying but am picking more than i we need really so no complaints there ..
Will i grow these again next year ??, The MT Athos i would like to give a second chance from my own seed which i fermented and Polaris ??./.
If i am more organised next year i would like to grow Mariannas Peace and Brandywine again as so far they have been my most succesfull tasters to date as well as several others which i am sussing out..
Depending on the rains we recieve that are predicted will tell the story

.

KarenO · October 16, 2022

If it’s red, it’s not Polaris to be clear. Polaris is purple and potato leaf.
It’s Good if you enjoyed it anyway but please don’t circulate incorrect seed labelled Polaris.curious , What specific seed seller in Ukraine did you get it from?
I hope you will be able to try the correct Polaris one day. It’s very good.
KarenO

Whwoz · October 16, 2022

Quote:

Originally Posted by KarenO

If it’s red, it’s not Polaris to be clear. Polaris is purple and potato leaf.
It’s Good if you enjoyed it anyway but please don’t circulate incorrect seed labelled Polaris.curious , What specific seed seller in Ukraine did you get it from?
I hope you will be able to try the correct Polaris one day. It’s very good.
KarenO

He shall be able to try the correct Polaris next season, as I shall send Volvo some seed fairly soon Karen.

KarenO · October 16, 2022

Quote:

Originally Posted by Whwoz

He shall be able to try the correct Polaris next season, as I shall send Volvo some seed fairly soon Karen.

Great!
KO

Volvo · October 18, 2022

Quote:

Originally Posted by KarenO

If it’s red, it’s not Polaris to be clear. Polaris is purple and potato leaf.
It’s Good if you enjoyed it anyway but please don’t circulate incorrect seed labelled Polaris.curious , What specific seed seller in Ukraine did you get it from?
I hope you will be able to try the correct Polaris one day. It’s very good.
KarenO

Thank you kindly for that Karen and will chase up the correct Polaris if that may be the case??..
You know one google search i did , did have a Red Polaris ey??..
Will be interesting see how the purple potato leaf variety tastes ey

..

TomNJ · October 16, 2022

I had a decent year but not as good as last year. Last year I yielded 724 pounds from 30 plants for an average of 24.1 pounds per plant. This year I only partially tied the plants up and the combination of rot from sprawling and early disease onset reduced my yield to 541 pounds or 18.0 pounds per plant. Still this was more than enough to satisfy our need for tomato sandwiches and canned salsa, sauce, crushed tomatoes, and ketchup for the year.

Once again Kosovo was the yield winner with 21 pounds per plant this year (27 pounds per plant last year). Since 90% of my tomatoes go into canned products, yield is my first priority, although I do grow some Brandywine Sudduth for sandwiches and caprese salads.

CrazyAboutOrchids · October 16, 2022

I was SO disappointed this year - but I'm over it, I know every year can't be a great one and I've been here before and had a great year the following.

I grew 15 plants and started out with probably the healthiest, best looking starts I've ever had. We had a wet spring and I had great looking plants with tons of flowers. Then heat and severe drought hit. I was worried about my well so while I did water, I wasn't as generous. The plants went into survival mode, I lost flowers, it was a real challenge.

The season wasn't a total bust though, when we finally did get a break, some plants just took off. Nothing was as productive as normal though - not even my Sunsugar.

For new to me....GGWT was a fav for taste - she didn't pump out tomatoes, but she did very well despite her challenges. Polaris was new as well; it didn't really like the heat, was slow to produce as ALL my plants were, fruit was tasty beautiful and it will be a repeat. I tried 2 seeds from a fellow gardener - I will probably repeat 1 but not the other. Sunrise Bumblebee was a total bust. It apparently does NOT like heat. I've never seen anything like it, it stayed at about a 2 ft height for most of the summer while plants around it grew 3 - 4 times it's height. We got 1 tomato from it. Then once the weather broke, it grew, it did produce but was a disappointment after reading so much. It will not earn a repeat appearance in my garden; while the weather was a challenge, I'd like to use the space for something that will at least give it a try.

I grew some repeats... NAR, Sunsugar, AGP, Kosovo, German Red Strawberry, Anna Maria, Rozoyvi Myod. My hearts are still out there trying, but I think this week will be the end of them.

New process for me this year - tossing the overflow into the freezer to wait till I had time to deal with them. What an AWESOME trick - can't believe I never knew this one and I've been gardening for close to 15 years. Can't believe I never read of it before. Didn't lose a tomato because I just couldn't get to them. I made some marinara, but mainly focused on replenishing our salsa.

Onward and upward - I have my garden planned for next year already! Karen O's Cowboy and Tundra will be joining my crew and I am SO excited to grow them!

October 14, 2022	#1
tlmcca Tomatovillian™ Join Date: May 2016 Location: Glen Carbon, IL Near St. Louis, Zone 6a Posts: 8	How did your tomatoes do this season? My experience was absolutely horrible. I planted two each of three heirloom varieties: Black Cherry, Delicious and Mrs. Maxwell's Big Italian. These have been my go to varieties for several seasons and have always produced more fruit that we, our neighbors and the various critters could eat. This year, however, was an almost total disaster. Only the Black Cherry produced fruit that generally ripened on the vine. The other two produced no more than two dozen! I'm blaming the excessive heat due to climate change for most of this. We are just recently getting temps below 85 degrees required for ripening. I'm ripening a dozen or so at a time in a box with a banana but even these are bland in taste rivalling those in grocery stores. So, how well did you do? Also, if you experienced the same excessive heat issue do you have any ideas for mitigating the problem? Thanks, Terry

October 14, 2022	#2
PaulF Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Brownville, Ne Posts: 3,295	My full report will be coming soon since a hard freeze is in the near forecast. Mitigation for less than stellar year? That is called,"just wait until next year." __________________ there's two things money can't buy; true love and home grown tomatoes.

October 15, 2022	#5
D.J. Wolf Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Mar 2021 Location: Illinois Posts: 199	My season was so so. Rainfall was well below average, and very spotty. I don't care how much you can irrigate, nothing beats natural rainfall IMHO. That said, it seemed wetter than it actually was, and in hindsight I should have been watering deeper/more frequently than I was probably. Temperatures were also all over the place, I would guess that if you averaged things out, it was overall cooler than normal. That said, hitting upper 90's for several days in April and again in May didn't help anything. I picked everything the 7th and 8th, the morning of the 8th was a heavy frost/freeze event that would have ended the season anyway. A full 3 weeks before last year. Overall, not a failure of a year, but not as good as last year. Both overall production and individual fruit sizes and weights seemed down this year. The two bright spots were the Marzano Fire and the cherry tomatoes. Marzano Fire production was probably 65% of what I anticipated, and cherry tomato production was at or over expectations. By the middle of September I was almost tired of eating cherry tomatoes lol. __________________ Kevin (aka the DJ)

October 15, 2022	#7
Yak54 Tomatovillian™ Join Date: May 2009 Location: Madison, OH, zone 6 Posts: 470	I grew 11 varieties this year and most did pretty well with productivity down a bit from my best years but still decent. The worst producer this year was Lucky Cross which only gave me 17 tomatoes from the plant and that is compared to 30-35 tomatoes in better years. On the more productive varieties there were 64 tomatoes from the AGP plant which was a new one for me this year and most of the tomatoes were rather small at only 6 or 7 ounces. Not what I was expecting and I'm wondering if this was true to type ? My Dester plant did well producing 51 tomatoes. And then there was the King Kong plant which only produced 20 tomatoes but 7 of them were 2 lbs or more. This plant came from seed I received from Farmer Shawn in "Carolyns' Last Seed Offer" and I probably won't grow it again cause the taste was not up to what I'm used to. My Brandywine Cowlick's produced 37 tomatoes which is up from the 14-15 fruit this variety has produced for me in the 4 previous times I've grown it. Flavor wise Cowlick's, Dester, Indian Stripe, Polish, SOTW and Lucky Cross were the best tasting for me but my taste buds were assaulted at about the peak of my season with Covid for about two weeks. __________________ Dan

October 16, 2022	#9
Volvo Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: Australia Posts: 289	My Tomato season Okay Karen i shall also add to the thread .. Although our season for our neck of the woods is Autumn /Winter due to our harsh Summers i was a tad late planting out as i wasnt going to this year but Missus insisted due to the cost of Tomatos and Cukes so planted out later than i should . Heirlooms i planted out were Mt Athos and Polaris, the Polaris turned out a Red variety , not that it mattered as taste was there . Heck of a long growth for Tomatos to ripen with most going well over 120 days easy . April till now !! thats quite a spell ey.. The Polaris came from Ukraine and some grandmas throwing which were purchases as seedling by the better halfe just see how they taste . Do have seeds in my collection but in all honesty i didnt feel like a big variety this year so settled with what i had. Both Mt Athos and Polaris grew all sizes and fairly marked most fruits were and did have to share with the bugs as i dont like spraying but am picking more than i we need really so no complaints there .. Will i grow these again next year ??, The MT Athos i would like to give a second chance from my own seed which i fermented and Polaris ??./. If i am more organised next year i would like to grow Mariannas Peace and Brandywine again as so far they have been my most succesfull tasters to date as well as several others which i am sussing out.. Depending on the rains we recieve that are predicted will tell the story . __________________ Good Better Best Never let It rest Until Your Good Is Better And Your Better Best

October 14, 2022	#3
biscuitridge Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Jan 2014 Location: washington Posts: 498	My year was great!! I grew 3 tomatoes that were heavier than the current world record that is also mine,so I certainly can't complain.

October 14, 2022	#4
Guarimn Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Dec 2013 Location: Long Island, New York Posts: 23	I'm in 7b. The heat over here wasn't that oppressive. I grew about 5 or 6 plants early on: Black Prince, Red Reif heart, Black Krim. The heart produced a lot of huge fruit which were mostly eaten by critters. The other plants grew strong at first and then something, not sure what exactly(got rid of the spider mites so it wasn't that. Maybe not enough or too much water. Or perhaps it was the heat. I can not tell), stressed them out. The plants hung on for a while and later fruit wasn't very delicious when it ripened. In July I planted about 13 dwarfs, a couple cherries, and a small fruited variety. Plants looking very healthy. Still waiting on a handfuls of large, small and medium fruit. Keeping my fingers crossed

October 15, 2022	#6
habitat_gardener Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Apr 2008 Location: California Central Valley Posts: 2,543	Nematodes and heat waves! Daily highs above 90F for nearly all of July to September, with about 9-10 days a month over 100F for June-September. I haven’t been rotating crops, and planted mostly nightshades in the current community garden plot for 3 years, so the nematodes were bad this year. The whole bed of dwarf tomatoes, almost all the determinates, and most of the OP indeterminates produced little or nothing. Successes: Polaris was the best tasting, but I got only a few, mostly smaller ones. I haven’t pulled it yet, but the healthy Woodle Orange plant right next to it produced no tomatoes and had lots of root-knot nematodes. Benevento F1 was great! I got a nice crop of large, tasty striped tomatoes. Purple Boy F1 was the most productive of the very tasty varieties. Picus F1 was a fairly productive paste, nice and dense. Start F1 produced a lot of surprisingly sweet but tiny tomatoes. Yana was a very productive red determinate! Lots of small red tomatoes that were edible but would not win any taste tests.

October 16, 2022	#8
KarenO Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Oct 2012 Location: Vancouver Island Posts: 5,931	Long gold spring has been balanced out by a long warm dry fall here on Vancouver island. Busy summer here with about 325 plants altogether including the smaller dwarfs. Enjoyed some new cherries from Fred at Artisan most especially Lucky Bee which I think is just excellent with a very sweet and complex flavour. Golden cherrywine is delicious as well and my plants are still blooming here on October 15. I was satisfied with the progress of My own projects and I am happy to be able to introduce two new beefsteaks- Cowboy and One trick pony and a new Purple Heart all regular leaf For a change from my potato leaf tomatoes. Three new dwarfs from the short and sweet project are stable and will join sweet baby Jade. Those are Emerald City, Yellow Brick Road and Ruby Slippers. A venture into anthocyanin has produced some interesting results including a potato leaf bicolour heart with a nice dark cap of antho on the shoulder and a white bicolour beefsteak was a nice surprise. Early days mist Definitely but it was encouraging to find some flavours we enjoyed. I still have a few plants in the garden and some small dwarfs going at this time in mid October. I’m heading south soon so I’m excited about that. All in all a good year for me and lots of planning in the works for winter and spring. KarenO

October 16, 2022	#14
TomNJ Tomatovillian™ Join Date: May 2009 Location: Floyd VA Posts: 771	I had a decent year but not as good as last year. Last year I yielded 724 pounds from 30 plants for an average of 24.1 pounds per plant. This year I only partially tied the plants up and the combination of rot from sprawling and early disease onset reduced my yield to 541 pounds or 18.0 pounds per plant. Still this was more than enough to satisfy our need for tomato sandwiches and canned salsa, sauce, crushed tomatoes, and ketchup for the year. Once again Kosovo was the yield winner with 21 pounds per plant this year (27 pounds per plant last year). Since 90% of my tomatoes go into canned products, yield is my first priority, although I do grow some Brandywine Sudduth for sandwiches and caprese salads.

October 16, 2022	#15
CrazyAboutOrchids Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: Zone 6 - CT Posts: 155	I was SO disappointed this year - but I'm over it, I know every year can't be a great one and I've been here before and had a great year the following. I grew 15 plants and started out with probably the healthiest, best looking starts I've ever had. We had a wet spring and I had great looking plants with tons of flowers. Then heat and severe drought hit. I was worried about my well so while I did water, I wasn't as generous. The plants went into survival mode, I lost flowers, it was a real challenge. The season wasn't a total bust though, when we finally did get a break, some plants just took off. Nothing was as productive as normal though - not even my Sunsugar. For new to me....GGWT was a fav for taste - she didn't pump out tomatoes, but she did very well despite her challenges. Polaris was new as well; it didn't really like the heat, was slow to produce as ALL my plants were, fruit was tasty beautiful and it will be a repeat. I tried 2 seeds from a fellow gardener - I will probably repeat 1 but not the other. Sunrise Bumblebee was a total bust. It apparently does NOT like heat. I've never seen anything like it, it stayed at about a 2 ft height for most of the summer while plants around it grew 3 - 4 times it's height. We got 1 tomato from it. Then once the weather broke, it grew, it did produce but was a disappointment after reading so much. It will not earn a repeat appearance in my garden; while the weather was a challenge, I'd like to use the space for something that will at least give it a try. I grew some repeats... NAR, Sunsugar, AGP, Kosovo, German Red Strawberry, Anna Maria, Rozoyvi Myod. My hearts are still out there trying, but I think this week will be the end of them. New process for me this year - tossing the overflow into the freezer to wait till I had time to deal with them. What an AWESOME trick - can't believe I never knew this one and I've been gardening for close to 15 years. Can't believe I never read of it before. Didn't lose a tomato because I just couldn't get to them. I made some marinara, but mainly focused on replenishing our salsa. Onward and upward - I have my garden planned for next year already! Karen O's Cowboy and Tundra will be joining my crew and I am SO excited to grow them!