I bought some seeds this year from Native Seed Search in hopes of having some crops. Too early to say yet except for the Punta Banda tomato heavy with fruit. Supposed to be close to indestructible & bear even in extreme heat. Seems to me native seeds grown in the desert for years oughta at least have a better chance.

Susan, Some drooping of tomatoes is normal in this excessive heat and the varieties that have the wilty gene will wilt even more than normal tomatoes which do not have the mutated gene or genes. When I see droopy tomatoes I check the soil by sticking my finger into it, and if the soil is dry, I water right then. With all plants, there is a certain wilt point that they reach where they've gone from being stressed to being practically dead, and if they are allowed to wilt beyond that point, they do not recover. When I talk about keeping tomato plants slightly dry to keep them producing better and to keep the fruits' flavor from being watered down, I always try to phrase it carefully so I make it clear I let them "almost wilt". I try to keep that "almost wilting" stage from going to the "wilting" stage since there's a wilt point of no return. I cannot really describe how you know when looking at a tomato plant that it is at that 'wilt point' of no return, but I know it when I see it. I hope your Rutgers is the determinate one and not the indeterminate one. Sometimes they're not labeled correctly and the labels can be confusing. In my garden, the indeterminate one, Rutgers Select (which is the original Rutgers introduced in the 1920s) gets 6-8' tall and Rutgers VFA which is the determinate (or semi-indeterminate) one gets about 5' tall. Both are heavy producers. Stacey, The Tumbling Toms are in 16" hanging baskets and their roots already completely fill the baskets. It kind of makes me wish I'd gone with 20 to 24" hanging baskets. Even with just the 16" basket, the plants are very heavy and it takes a strong support to hold them. I wasn't sure if I would have anything strong enough to support a larger basket. They are great producers and early producers. Today I harvested 3 or 4 dozen Tumbling Tom yellow fruit and about 8 Tumbling Tom Red. I did notice when raising them from seed that the yellow ones were much more vigorous growers, even as seedlings, than the red ones, and that has remained true in terms of productivity. I don't know if the reds will catch up with the yellows or if the yellows are just genetically stronger. Dawn

Jay, I am married to a former Pennsylvanian and he still has relatives there who garden and every summer I envy their cool temperatures (you know, they think 85 degrees is hot) and their usually abundant rainfall. When we go there to visit in summertime, everything is so lush and lovely that it blows my mind, especially compared to how roasting hot and tired everything looks in this part of the country at the same time. On the other hand, Late Blight seems to be on a tear there the last few years, so their beaufiful crops can fail suddenly. Marcy, That's a great list from the Kerr Center. Thanks for linking it. Susan, I think each of us adds/drops varieties for many reasons. After growing tomatoes for 25 years on my own and for at least 15 years with my dad prior to that, I'm just through with the massive experimentation. The truth is that out of every 20 or 25 new (to me) varieties that I try, maybe one or two is worth putting into the permanent growing rotation. So, rather than constantly looking for something new, I'm trying to refine the grow list and weed out those that perform least well in a broad range of conditions. I've reached the conclusion that there really aren't many, or maybe not any, incredible undiscovered varieties out there that taste/perform significantly better than what I've already tried....so I've stopped looking. I had high hopes for the Brandymaster series, likely because it is so tempting to believe there could be anything that could match Brandywine's flavor. They've performed so poorly here that I doubt I'd see a better performance next year or the year after. While many of you may be seeing significantly hotter or drier weather this year than in your average year, for us here in southcentral OK, our rainfall has been exactly 'average' for the year to date and so have our temperatures. If anything we've had slightly lower temperatures, in general, in Love County than we usually have although higher than average heat indices. So, for me, this is a pretty typical year except the real heat arrived in mid-May instead of late June so we got hot earlier, but not necessarily hotter than average...just earlier than average. A tomato variety that didn't perform well in what was a fairly typical year here at our place this year likely wouldn't perform any differently next year. In Oklahoma we have a wide range of average annual rainfall....some folks may average 15" of rainfall per year in western OK while others in eastern OK may average 50-60" or more. Humidity varies widely as does soil type and pH. So, what grows well for someone in highly alkaline soil and water in western OK may not grow nearly as well for someone in eastern OK with entirely different weather and soil. I enjoy looking at everybody's lists and hearing how different tomatoes perform for different people but I know that works well in areas drastically different from mine may not work well here. Growing in containers is much more complicated. First of all, nothing that I grow performs as well in containers as in the ground. Heat and pests hit container-grown plants much harder every year than those in the ground. The grasshoppers have completely stripped my container tomatoes of every leaf and fruit, but have only done sporadic damage to in-ground plants. It is the same thing with spider mites....only the container plants have had issues with them this summer. For me, container-grown tomatoes are great from Jan. or Feb. through the end of June or early July. After that, I might as well yank out those plants and toss them on the compost pile because they're toast. Last year, the tomatoes in containers did somewhat better than they usually do....but we had much higher than average rainfall and much more rain/clouds/cool weather than we see in an average summer. I'm looking for plants that perform best in the worst of conditions, not the best ones, because more often than not, we get the worst conditions every July and August. In containers, I plant tomatoes that can tolerate the heat and the restriction of their root growth and still perform. That means I often grow tomatoes in containers that I don't consider 'good enough' to plant into the ground....stuff like Better Bush and Husky Red Cherry. I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm just at the point that I want what produces best for us here, and I don't want to keep looking for something 'better' because I don't think there is anything out there that's really that much better than our tried and true varieties that make our grow list most years. For a long time, I gardened for fun....trying any and every thing that interested me. We ate all we wanted fresh and gave tons away and didn't care if we put up much for the non-gardening season or not. In recent years, though, I've developed a deeper appreciation for the truly superior flavor of anything/everything that's grown locally and picked/prepared/preserved at its peak of perfection. Thus, I give away little and try to raise as much of our annual food supply as possible. In a good year I fill up three freezers, a root cellar and manage to can 2 or 3 or 4 hundred jars of 'stuff'. Since that is what is important to me now, I want plants that produce well, that provide tasty food we like and that are not prima donnas requiring a lot of pampering. Thus, I'm less inclined to experiment and more inclined to plant what produces really well with little fuss. In a lot of ways, the 'experimentation years' were a lot more fun, but the farm-garden-preserving years have been much more productive. Now my family is spoiled and I must produce as much home-grown food as possible because they don't like grocery store stuff as much as they used to. Even DS's firestation co-workers prefer fresh, home-grown and I'm going to try to plant a lot more for them next year so I can send them all the tomatoes, peppers and other yuummy things they're craving. There just isn't room, or enough improved soil, to experiment with varieties now as there used to be. I don't mind that, really, because as long as what I'm growing is producing well, I've gotten over thinking there are incredible varieties out there just waiting for me to find them. Megan, Black Plum grew very well for me for a long time and then for 2 or 3 years it didn't and I dropped it. It is odd how that happens....and I loved Coyote too. If my garden were twice as large as it is, I'd bring it back to the grow list. So many varieties, so little time (and improved soil). The tomatoes I grow from seed invariably outperform storebought ones and I don't know why, but I've seen it enough years to know it is true. Dawn

Lazy's points are on target but I especially like the last paragraph. We often have mild winters and can grow a good crop at that time. Successfully growing tomatoes here in summer is almost impossible. Although gardener Leslie Doyle in Las Vegas pushes the Hawaiian Tropic tomato, promising it will grow in the heat. That tomato has mixed reviews as to flavor. I'm trying it this year to see: a) will it really grow in summer and b) how does it taste? I had serious germination issues with the seed I purchased from her, only got 4 seedlings from 8 or 10 seeds so that's disappointing to begin with!! But growing to production only to have bland tomatoes is just as disappointing as losing the tomatoes to heat stroke. I planted 5 or 6 tomato seedlings of different varieties in Sep last year and have been harvesting tomatoes since early January. Once that one week of frost temps passed, they started producing. I had to cover them and provide lights for warmth under the cover for the frost time, about a week I think. The plants have slacked off a bit lately but I just pruned back all the dead branches, poured on some fish emulsion and expect they will get a new spurt of growth and production before the heat heats. I have grown Super Sioux in the past and it did well in the heat and is very tasty, a large slicing tom. Another good one for here is Silvery Fir Tree, a 'salad slicing' size (I don't like currant size toms, WAY too small). I learned about this tomato from Gregory Ware who teaches various gardening and cooking classes through Southwest Gardener, which is how I met him, a "How to Grow Tomatoes in the Desert" class. He's very good. You might want to try one of the classes. SW Gardener is an eclectic gardening supply store in central Phx, 15th Ave and Thomas I think. Here's a link: SW Gardener Workshop Calendar Just keep trying till something works!!