There are all kinds of tomatoes that do well in hot, dry weather, but they need to be planted pretty early in the year so they can be big, healthy, blooming and setting fruit before the massively hot weather arrives.

First, avoid all the really large-fruited tomatoes. The larger the fruits, the fewer fruit you get per plant and the fewer you get in hot weather. So, smaller fruit--those in the 6 oz. to 10/12 oz. range will give you more pounds of fruit per plant than plants that produce fruit weighing one pound each or more.

Secondly, and this is especially true if you are a market grower, you need to have a mix of determinates and indeterminates. Determinates are bush-type plants that produce a heavier crop all at once so you'll get a lot of fruit before the worst heat arrives. Indeterminates are taller and more vining and as long as they are actively growing they'll keep getting taller and blooming and setting more fruit (within certain temperature limits).

Third, all of the tomato plants that set very small fruit (currant, cherry, pear and plum-shaped types that are bite-sized are maybe two-bite-sized) produce in spite of the heat. Some plants that produce slightly larger fruit (1-4 oz. or thereabouts) also set very well in the heat.

Fourth, the best-producing plants do not necessarily produce the best-tasting fruit, so keep that in mind when you make your choices. If excellent flavor is the most important thing to you, you may have to settle for smaller yields. If very good to good flavor is acceptable, you can grow many more varieties and get larger harvests.

Fifth, if tomato spotted wilt virus is an issue for you, then the ONLY plants that you have a chance of success with is those that have inborn resistance to TSWV or those which have been bred to have resistance to TSWV. As far as I know, no varieties are completely immune to it though.

Sixth, most of us who are avid tomato growers plant at least two rounds of plants--one round planted in the March-April time frame for tomatoes in May through July and sometimes August. The second round is referred to as fall tomatoes and can be planted in June or July (and, from my point of view, June is better than July) so you'll get fruit to ripen ahead of freezing fall/winter weather. I plant fall tomatoes in separate beds so they are getting started while the summer ones are still producing.

Now, here's some lists:

Small-Fruited Varieties That Produce All Summer Long:

CHERRY TYPES:

Black Cherry
Sun Gold
SunSugar FT (an improved SunGold type with less cracking)
Sweet Million
Supersweet 100
Sun Cherry (a red-fruited version of SunGold)
Large Red Cherry
Riesentraube
Husky Red Cherry
Isis Candy
Peacevine
Sugary
Juliet
Chadwick's Cherry
Jolly
Snow White
Sweet Baby Girl
Sugar Lump (aka Gardener's Delight)
Golden Gem (golden yellow cherry)
Sweet Chelsea (very large cherry types, very disease resistant)
Tommy Toe

GRAPE TYPES:
Sprite (determinate type with red fruit)
Grape (red fruit)
Rosalita (pink fruit)
Cuban Yellow Grape
Golden Sweet
Ildi (yellow fruited)
Elfin (detminate type with red fruit)
Green Grape

CURRANT TYPES:

These produce small, currant-sized tomatoes, in huge quantities on plants that often get very, very large. For example, last year, my Tess's Land Race Currant plants were about 9' tall and 4' to 5' wide so these require a lot of space, but produce thousands of fruit per plant. It takes a lot of effort to keep them picked.

Tess's Land Race Currant
Sara's Galapagos
Red Currant
Yellow Currant
Coyote (fruit are ivory to pale yellow)

PLUM/PASTE TYPES:

Martino's Roma
Opalka
Polish Linguisa
LaRoma
VeeRoma
Rio Grande
Viva Italia
Black Plum

SMALL TOMATOES: (1 TO 4 OZ.):

Porter
Porter Improved/Porter's Pride
Pink Ping Pong
Yellow Pink Pong
Jaune Flammee'
Livingston's Gold Ball/Gold Ball
Lime Green Salad
Fourth of July
Bloody Butcher
Super Boy

MEDIUM-SIZED FRUIT:

Druzba
Arkansas Traveler
Celebrity
Merced (no longer available, unless your local wholesaler stockpiled seed before it was discontinued, which a few growers did)
Better Bush
Bush Early Girl (more productive for me than Early Girl)
Homestead 24
Sioux
Super Sioux
Mountain Princess
Rutger's

LARGE-FRUITED TOMATOES: (Note: This are large-fruited in comparison to the previously-listed plants but they would not be considered all that large in parts of the country with milder climates where very large tomatoes are easy to grow. They are large for our climate.)

Better Boy
Big Boy (has produced heavy yields for me here in southern OK even in hot weather--not sure if it would do the same in NW OK)
New Big Dwarf
Momotaro
True Black Brandywine
Indian Stripe or Cherokee Purple (IS is more productive for me than CP)
Black Krim or Black from Tula
Aunt Ruby's German Green
Cherokee Green
Nebraska Wedding
Persimmon
Primetime
Supersonic
Ramapo
Mule Team

TOMATOES BRED TO PRODUCE IN HOT WEATHER:

Sunmaster VFFA
Tropic
Sun King VFTA
Shady Lady (very popular in California because heavy foliage helps prevent sunscald of the fruit)
Solar Fire VFF
Solar Set VFF
Heat Wave II (not sure if it is still on the market)

BRED FOR RESISTANCE TO TOMATO SPOTTED WILT VIRUS:

Crista
BHN 444 VFF
BHN 589 VFF
BHN 640 VFFF
Amelia
Red Defender
Mountain Glory

BRED FOR RESISTANCE TO TOMATO YELLOW LEAF CURL VIRUS:

SecuriTY

In our worst August heat, even many of those bred for heat will slow down. You can keep them in production by shading them with 30% shade cloth and by misting them once or twice a day and by thumping their blossoms early in the morning when the plants and pollen are cooler from nighttime temps.

Dawn

I'll second Sioux. This one has done great for us in heat. We also like its flavor.

Porter did well for us too. But I didn't care for its flavor that much.

Roma, a determinate, did exceedingly well for us last summer, though it did have some blossom end rot at the start of production (I seem to recall this is common with this variety). Roma isn't at all a favorite, with us, for eating. But it is great as a canner and exceedingly productive.

George
Tahlequah, OK

I'm in NW Ok and I plant jetstar, I know it's not a fancy tomatoe, I get it at the nursery. I also grow early girl and had good luck with both of them last year and they tasted good. I have enough volunteers come up so I don't worry about cherry tomatoes. My hubby likes porters but I don't think they have that much flavor.

i just got my soil test back, my ph is a 7.5 do i need to do something to it or is it ok. Thanks

Sooners,

Tomatoes do best in soil with a pH of 6.2 to 6.8, but they will thrive in soil with a pH of up to 7.3 provided that soil is high in organic content. Our soil tested at 7.8 to 8.0 when we first moved here and built the raised beds, but the addition of lots of organic matter has brought the pH down to around 6.8. To get more organic material in the soil, we have added the following to the soil (but not all at once): chopped/shredded leaves in the fall (they mostly decompose by spring), grass clippings, composted cow manure, composted chicken litter from the henhouse, compost (from our own piles and bought in bags at Lowe's), purchased mushroom compost, lava sand, green sand, composted cotton burrs, blood meal and bone meal.

To improve the soil, I don't focus exclusively on lowering the pH. Rather, I focus on getting more organic matter in the soil and have found that doing so gradually adjusts the pH naturally without throwing other nutrients out of whack. I feed my plants with Espoma Tomato-Tone organic plant food, putting one handful of the food in each hole at planting time, and top dressing at least a couple of times during the growing season.

If you need to lower your pH to a level that is a little better for tomato plants, there are several ways to do it.

A soil pH of 7.0 is neutral, 6.0 is mildly acidic, 5.0 is strongly acidic, and 4.0 is extremely acidic. Any number higher than 7.0 indicates alkaline soil.

Before you start trying to adjust your pH, look at your soil test and see if it gives you your CEC, which is your cation exchange capacity. The CEC estimates the ability of your soil to hold positively charged nutrients (especially K, Mg, Ca and Na), in a form readily available for uptake by the plants. Generally speaking, sandy and sandy loam soils have a lowere CEC while clay, improved clay and loam clay have a higher CEC. You want a higher CEC. With a higher CEC, you can grow better tomatoes even if your pH is slightly higher than ideal.

To correct high pH of 7.5 or higher, add organic material to the soil as I mentioned above that we have done. You can do this over time, striving to continue adding organic material to your soil every year. My favorite way is just to mulch with grass clippings, half-rotted or spoiled hay, chopped/shredded leaves and sometimes pine bark fines or chipped/shredded hardwood tree trimmings. As the mulch decomposes on the surface of the soil, it turns into compost and the compost is carried down into the soil by rain and irrigation, digging, earthworms and other natural soil movers, etc. Over time, your soil will get better and better and so will your tomato harvests.

If you need to take "drastic" action to quickly improve your soil's pH, you can add elemental sulphur at a rate of 5 to 10 lbs. per 1,000 square feet of growing area.

Adding organic matter, I have found, is just as effective as adding sulphur and it is better for your soil in the long run since it improves both its ability to hold water and its ability to drain adequately so roots do not become waterlogged. As a minimum, you should strive to add at least 250 pounds of organic matter per 1,000 square feet of soil and, if your soil is very, very low in organic matter, then you could add 1,000 pounds per square feet. You also can add organic material to your garden over time by growing cover crops like winter rye, clover, field peas, hairy vetch, etc. during the cool season and tilling them into the ground several weeks before your plant your spring crops. These cover crops are often referred to as "green manure" because they decompose in the soil and enrich it similar to the way that composted manure does.

I wouldn't drive myself crazy trying to change the pH too much at once. Just take your time and try to improve it a little every year. After a few years, you'll be amazed at the improvement in your soil that you'll see just from adding organic matter to the soil. And, once the soil has enough organic matter, the pH fixes itself.

For what it is worth, both my dad and I grew tomatoes in Texas in black mucky clay, lightly amended with compost, that had a pH of 7.5 to 8.2, so it is possible to get good yields with a pH of 7.5--it is just that as the pH drops, the yields and the quality of the fruit both will increase.

Dawn