This Just Gets Worse Every Year...

[b54red]

Originally Posted by AZRuss

At the moment I'm actually considering planting fewer tomato plants next year. I've been experimenting with literally everything trying to find heat tolerance. I had so many taste disappointments this year that I'm considering altering my strategy for next spring: planting fewer varieties of two or three plants each and going for fabulous taste and production, and accepting the fact that July is end of season for me.

(Sure. Check with me on this in February.)

I don't know if you've tried it before but this year I had a couple of Marianna's Peace set fruit during the hottest part of the summer here. Temps reached 103+ and stayed there for most of 2 wks. During that time even my indestructable Big Beef stopped setting but the Marianna's kept putting on new fruit. I'm sure it gets hotter out there but at least the nights are cooler. When the days top 100 here the nights rarely go below 90 and of course we have very high humidity, whereas I'm sure yours is very low.
My biggest problem with Marianna's was I couldn't get an early one to survive. The ones that made so many tasty tomatoes were set out in mid June.
I had two others that didn't taste too bad and set fruit during the high heat, both hybrids, one was 1st Prize and the other was Steak Sandwich. I'm definitely going to try them all again to make sure it wasn't a fluke.