Growing in a hot climate

[icemncmth]

I live in the middle of Oklahoma and for the last few years we have had some pretty hot weather...

Anyone in my neck of the woods have any suggestions on how to grow tomatoes in Oklahoma!..

My best result so far is to grow in 50 gal trash cans and that way I avoid the dreaded red clay.

[oc tony]

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sourc...U_vQ_qmPYgYKPA

[b54red]

I've been using raised beds for a long time and we have plenty of heat here in lower Alabama. My beds are sitting on clay. When I first started gardening here I had about one inch of topsoil so it was necessary to use raised beds. It took some years but I now have very rich black loamy soil in the beds. Load after load of manure, peanut hulls, leaves, grass clippings and other orgainic matter slowly but surely changed into great garden soil. I also add water saving crystals to the beds every year or two so they don't dry out as rapidly and mulch heavily during the summer. I recently added soaker hoses to my arsenal to combat dry spells. They allow me to deeply water without wetting the foliage. It is very important to adequately water the tomatoes during times of high heat. I am going to try some shade cloth next year and see if I can eliminate some of the sun scald I get during the hotter months.
Another big factor is using varieties that will set fruit during hot weather because most tomatoes don't set well in high heat. We had an exceptionally long hot summer this past year and some varieties definitely did much better. Some of the ones that set well in the heat this past summer were Big Beef, Gary O' Sena, Indian Stripe, Black Krim, Berkley Tie Dye Pink, Mule Team, Kosovo, Linnies Oxheart, Old Virginia, JD's Special C Tex, and Stump of the World.

[Stepheninky]

It gets pretty darn hot here in KY too and what I am planning to do is stagger seedlings next year. Spring tomatoes do great and in the fall tomatoes set really well. But come August nothing really sets. So next year I plan to set out tomatoes at different intervals and see what happens. The plants do good but get spent towards mid august then they will still set but the tomatoes are small and not as plentiful. So a staggering approach will help me see what works so following years I can come up with a planting schedule.

I am probably going to use grow bags this year for a lot of the tomatoes. I have a half acre area that floods in the spring rains but does fine the rest of the summer, so hoping to move plants into that area as the season progresses.

[b54red]

I have been staggering my plantings for years now. It means starting and potting up a lot of seedlings that won't all be used but it is worth it. No matter how great you think you've planned your first spring planting it seems that one of the latter plantings will do as good or better. This past season I started setting out plants in mid March and ended with the last ones at the end of September. I usually set out some every 3 weeks or so all season long and this year I only had about 10 days in mid September with no ripe fruit.
The black tomatoes like Indian Stripe, JD's Special C Tex, Gary O' Sena and Black Krim seemed to do the best in my April and May plantings. In June and July I had the best luck with BTD Pink, Gary O' Sena, Hege German Pink, and Marianna's Peace. The ones that are doing the best planted after July for a late fall crop are Druzba, Big Beef, Jetsetter, BTD Pink, and Cherokee Purple. The varieties that were set out earlier but still continued to produce even in 100 degree weather were Stump of the World, Kosovo, Old Virginia, and Neves Azorean Red.

[RinTinTin]

@ b54red: It seems that a disproportionate % of those that did well for you this season were PL varieties. Makes me wonder 2 things:

1) Was your Mule Team the RL, or the PL version?
2) Are PLs a major benefit in very hot climates?

Could be the extra protection makes PL more favorable in HOT weather. Or, just luck-of-the-draw.

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by RinTinTin

@ b54red: It seems that a disproportunate % of those that did well for you this season were PL varieties. Makes me wonder 2 things:

1) Was your Mule Team the RL, or the PL version?
2) Are PLs a major benefit in very hot climates?

Could be the extra protection makes PL more favorable in HOT weather. Or, just luck-of-the-draw.

There's a PL version of Mule Team?

All the varieties bred by Joe Bratka's father should be RL and those include Mule Team, Box Car Willie, Red Barn, Great Divide and Pasture.

A priori I don't automatically assume that a PL version of an original RL is the same except for leaf form b'c of the different ways that mutations can occur such more than one gene can be involved.

[RinTinTin]

***There's a PL version of Mule Team?***

It appears so...probably a cross:

Mule Team Potato Leaf - Tatiana's TOMATOBase

Something she got from Blue Ribbon.

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by RinTinTin

***There's a PL version of Mule Team?***

It appears so...probably a cross:

Mule Team Potato Leaf - Tatiana's TOMATOBase

Something she got from Blue Ribbon.

Having been the one who was able to get Mule Team and the others bred by Joe's father germinated originally I can say that what's shown at Tanias's site certainly is not Mule Team, regardless of leaf form.

Right now I'm looking at the picture of Mule Team in my book and the fruit shape is a globe, slightly oblate, same as Box Car Wille, but not a beefsteak as is shown at Tania's site.

But Tania went to great lengths to say that it might not be Mule Team at all and not even genetically stable .

Ah well,

[RinTinTin]

For her to get 50% PL in her grow out makes me think that the seed she received had been X'ed with a PL, and one of Mule Team's parents might as well have been a PL.

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by RinTinTin

For her to get 50% PL in her grow out makes me think that the seed she received had been X'ed with a PL, and one of Mule Team's parents might as well have been a PL.

What am I missing here?

I went back and read about Mule Team PL at Tania's site and didn't see anything about there were 50% PL's in either Tania's or Maria's growout.

Tania suggested that it "could" be a cross with Mule Team and ??? IF Mule team was heterozygous for PL, and that "could" be true, but all the varieties that Joe's father bred were RL.

In addition, the shape of what's shown there is certainly not Mule Team, so I think I'd side with Tania who suggested it was a seed mixup b'c Maria was also growing German Queen that same year and GQ is a large pink beefsteak with PL foliage.

[RinTinTin]

Sorry, I was thinking of something else she had a 50-50 grow out on. Seed mix ups do happen. I once bought a packet of Snow Peas, and everybody complimented me on my beautiful Sweet Peas.

[b54red]

RinTinTin, you didn't look closely at my list of tomatoes that did well in the heat; because most of them were regular leaf with the exception of Gary O' Sena, and Stump of the World. I have found no correlation to success with the leaf type. If anything I have probably had more success with the regular leaf plants. I did inadvertently leave off one potato leaf plant that has done well down here in the heat and that is Marianna's Peace. MP has been most successful for me when planted in late spring or very early summer. For some reason I can't seem to get it to live when it is set out very early.

[Worth1]

You guys can go on about the tomato you are talking about but I will put my comment in about the heat and tomatoes.

With my experience and my whacked out travels I plant seeds in late December (when I dont mooch plants from suze like I did this year) Plant out early and pray for no frost.
I get the maters and let the plant die.
The only ones I keep alive are the small fruited ones like wild cherry and such.
you can get fruit from these all summer long I dont care how hot it gets.
My life doesn't allow me to be around all of the time so this is my way of getting what I can with what I have.

Another thing as nutty as it sounds is to plant tomatoes that are bred for a short growing season.

In central Texas you get from the first of March to the last of June if your are lucky after that you can forget having much if any bloom set.
Some years it gets hot fast and you get nothing on some plants but farming/gardening is not a quitters game so you go on to next year.


Worth

[RinTinTin]

I DID look closely at your list: discounting the F1 on the list, it was 2 out of 10 (20%). PLs do not come close to representing 20% of the available varieties out there. It would probably make more sense to me if I also knew which varieties did NOT do well. It just seemed to me that PLs somehow did better 'per capita' than would be expected.

As Worth pointed out, smaller (Patio Tomatoes) seem to perform well ANYWHERE. Here in the PNW, it is hard to grow a full sized tomato with our lack of warm summers, but the 'patios' always come through. As we speak, I have a couple dozen Yellow Pears ready to eat...at last!