Yeah I think it won't be a good year for my favourite toms, Golden Jubelle and Park's Whopper ( more like whimper this year).
On the flip side my oldest eggplants were permanetly stunned be the below normal temps of a couple of months ago. They are real runts compared to the ones planted a month later.

My tomatoes have tons of blooms but no new fruit. One plant right in the middle is getting all wilty. Just one of them, just to confuse me.

My eggplants are half the size of those in a friend's garden, but are making some fruit. The old ones and newer ones are the same size. Stunted is putting it nicely.

I'm beginning to think I should just really like sunchokes -they are doing great.

My plants are wilted and I feel like I'm melting like the wicked witch. This is what I have as background on my computer now. This was Valentine's day, 2004.

Here is a link that might be useful:

Bill,

I feel your pain. For the first time in a long time, I'm looking at my tomato plants and thinking to myself that I'll likely yank them in July after the fruit already on them has ripened, and will replant that space with okra and southern peas because those two crops always produce for me no matter what as long as the grasshoppers don't eat them.

I went ahead and started seeds for a mid-summer planting because (a) I am an eternal optimist and (b) there's always a chance the weather will change and rain will start falling. Of course, (b) is pretty rare, but I do remember some well-timed rain in July and August of 2009 that saved my tomato crop that year, so I have to believe it could happen again. I feel like there's about 50-50 odds that my fall tomato plants will be composted instead of being transplanted, but only time will tell.

This year I planted tons of hybrids so DH and DS would have tons of tomatoes to share with their coworkers, and that has worked out well so far, but once we've harvested the tomatoes already on the hybrids, I doubt the plants are going to set more. I've already warned DH and DS that the tomatoes are no longer setting fruit and that once we give away all the fruit that have set already, there likely won't be any more and have told them to make sure their coworkers understand that. (I'm not giving away my precious heirloom toms!)

I agree with you that two years in a row hurts. Even more, I keep wondering if this is what climate change is giving us and if this is the new normal. If so, it will become increasingly important for us to get all of our tomatoes off to the earliest possible start so we can get good fruitset before the heat arrives....when....in mid-May instead of the more traditional mid- to late-June?

I also keep thinking about Russia's heat wave last year where temps set all-time records that in some cases exceeded 110 - 120 degrees. What if that is us this summer?

Loretta, I just want to run outside and roll in the snow in your photos...except it is all gone now, isn't it? lol

Dawn

Dawn, it's too bad that the only thing pictures can do is bring back memories of coolness. Too bad we don't have something like the holographic suite from Star Trek: TNG where we could feel the picture, too.
I hate heat like this. We are getting a lot of tomatoes off the plants that we had in the WOW's and the ones we planted in late March and covered with row cover, but that's just about a dozen plants. I wanted to roast and/or dry more tomatoes for the freezer, but I don't know how much I will have left for that. Right now, we're eating every one that comes off. It sounds greedy, but the taste of tomatoes with real flavor is not to be ignored. I don't expect much from the 24 we planted the usual time, on April 10th. I think you are right, Dawn. Next year I'm going to set more out earlier. Yesterday, I pulled out some basil and okra that weren't doing very well. I figure that there is no point in using the energy and water to baby them. Our water bill is going to be outlandish as it is.
We got .07 inches of rain last night and one hail stone. The drought is killing us, but I worry every time I see a red blob on radar because it seems like there are more damaging conditions in them than there is rain.
At least, in Oklahoma, you never know when the weather might change for the better. We deserve a break.

Loretta

I noticed this morning that the temperatures are giving a lot of you a break as they have dropped down to the level that allows tomato pollen to fertilize the flowers. So, if you have flowers on your plants, run outside today and shake the plants or thump the flowers!

It was 79 degrees here at 6 a.m. and has since dropped a couple of degrees, but not enough to help my tomatoes.

Loretta, I was talking to Tim last night about this thread and told him that next year I want to get more plants in the ground earlier no matter what it takes because it is the plants that went into the ground earliest that are heavily laden with fruit. The ones that went into the ground a couuple of weeks later have been far less productive. Those plants were not deliberately planted later, but we were having fires and I wasn't home to finish planting or, if I was, the wind was blowing 50 mph which wasn't good for transplanting anything. It amazes me what a difference a couple of weeks makes.

I can't use WOWs because my garden slopes too much and they fall over before you're even through filling them up. I may construct low tunnels or something or wrap cages in either greenhouse plastic or frost blankets. I'd like to at least get my plants in the ground "on time" and not late but in recent years the late frosts in May following my average last frost date of March 28th have driven me bonkers and made me hesitate to plant as early as I used to.

No rain here last night. Just thunder and lightning. We've hit 100 the last couple of days but today is supposed to be cooler, although not cool enough that it will let my tomatoes set fruit.

You know, if we had big walk-in refrigerators, we could go sit inside them and cool off and that would almost make us feel like we're walking through the snow.

Dawn

Since I've started checking the okla forum, I've been continually suprised at your weather. I would have thought we would have pretty much the same conditions, or that you would even have a little longer growing season than us. But last year your killing frost was 3 or 4 weeks ahead of us and your last frost was after ours this spring. Is it because you are lower where you live, that close to the river? We have been getting the very late freezes and frosts but they mostly are ones that we can protect from. I used to envy you, where you lived, but not any more. You have to really scramble to keep things growing, don't you. I see why you start so many things in pots.

We do have our lousy weather, though. A few falls ago, we had a light first freeze in late Oct. And then it warmed up. Everything started growing again. The weather people were predicting a light freeze one day in Nov. I was happy because I wanted things to harden off before really cold weather. It was supposed to be 27 that night. It got down to 7 and stayed below freezing for several days. I lost a ton of shrubs and plants and everything that survived lost foliage. I replanted a lot of herbs and the flooding rains got them the next spring.

I think you are right that we need to worry about the unpredictability of weather, now. I don't know how many years it will last or if it's the way things will be from now on, but I'm trying to figure out ways to grow things to lessen the effects. I've stocked up on different weights of row cover and I've made hoops to go over my raised beds. Of course, I just have a fairly small backyard veg. garden, mostly in tomatoes. You are facing a lot bigger job than I am. At least we have people on the forum who share solutions, especially you. I would have planted my WOW's this spring, but if you hadn't mentioned starting things early because of the drought, I wouldn't have planted the extra tomatoes that I grew for spares. You doubled my early crop. Thanks.

Loretta

Loretta,

My weather befuddles me too. It "has to be" because we are in a low-lying microclimate as nothing else makes any sense. However, our weather is highly erratic, though the same could be said of any location in Oklahoma.

Here in Love County, in the 13 years we've been here, our first killing frost in autumn has come as early as late September and as late as mid-December. That's a huge range! Our last killing frost of spring has occurred as early as late February one year, but for the last 4 years it has hit on May 3rd or 4th, which also is a huge range.

Rainfall is a whole different issue. Of course it varies wildly. I think the lowest annual rainfall we've had since moving here was a little under 19" in 2003 and the most was a little over 50" in 2009. Some "old timers" here insist that back in the old days, they routinely had annual rainfall near 50" without fail. More importantly than total overall rainfall is when/how it falls. One June we had over a foot of rain. I think it was in 2004 and I think 2007 was similar. That's great for June, but if no more rain falls after that until autumn, then we have drought in July and August anyway.

Our weather since about 2005 or 2006 has been completely the opposite of what we saw in the first half of the decade. I don't know why the sudden change, but I'm inclined to think it is related to worldwide climate change, although I have no idea if the climate change is part of a natural cycle of the earth or if it is manmade. So, with the abrupt change in our weather here, I have had to make make many adjustments to how and when I plant. It is making me crazy.

My DH is usually totally supportive of my gardening projects, but routinely turns down my annual plea that he build a huge Biodome over my garden to moderate the wild swings in the weather. (And wouldn't I just drop dead of shock if he suddenly agreed to it...not that we could afford it anyway!)

I've gotten into row covers in a big way and they make a big difference.

I'm glad my comment on starting/planting extra tomato plants was helpful to you. Congrats on the great early harvest. When we lived in Fort Worth, it got so hot so early there that we planted much too early in an effort to beat the heat. Usually it paid off because it was easy to cover up a small garden on a couple of late cold nights. Here, the garden is so much bigger and there's just so much to cover. Once the plants are tall, it is hard to cover them up to protect them from our now-expected late frost in May.

My potato plants usually freeze several times because of the erratic spring weather, and I know the repeated freeze damage cuts my production back a bit each time it occurs. This year they only froze once (I didn't cover them up) but I covered them up on two additional very late freezing nights and they were not damaged. Maybe it is a coincidence, but we just harvested our largest potato crop ever so I think covering up the plants, which were about 2' tall the last time I covered them, paid off.

I learn so much from this and other GW forums too. For example, even though I observed incredibly high fruit set on Big Boy and Better Boy fall tomato plants in August of one of the years in the early 2000s, when our highs were around 108-113 and our lows were in the low to mid-80s, I couldn't explain it. It really puzzled me because I well understood the connection between high temps and blossom drop. Then, a couple of years later I noticed that Carla, who is in Sacramento, posted often on the Tomato Forum about how she gets great fruit set in high heat accompanied by very low humidity. Bingo! That little light bulb went off in my head because in the years I had the very high fruit set in August, our RH was in the teens and single digits during the time the fruit set. So, what she described explained what I observed. I am not sure how long it would have taken me to figure out the humidity connection on my own, or if I ever would have.

I love my back-up tomato plants. I usually keep them going in cups until mid-May. Eventually I compost them. However, the peace of mind they give me every time hail is in the forecast is just priceless.

I planted everything as early as I could this year in order to beat the heat and it is paying off. We've got the largest green bean harvest from the bush beans that we've ever had this early. After last year, I knew I needed to get ahead of the grasshoppers and be finished with the bush beans before July arrived. Our onion crop is the best ever, although either 2007 or 2008 was a great onion year too. However, this year most of the above-ground cool season crops produced poorly as did the fruit trees. On the other hand, I didn't want or need another fruit harvest of over 300 lbs. like we had last summer. It is really too much fruit for one family to eat fresh and for one person to process.

Every year some things perform better and others perform poorly and you have to go with the flow. However, if you watch me at planting time, you can tell what I 'missed' most from the previous year. This year I went hog wild planting beans and southern peas because they were gobbled up by the grasshoppers last year. Although I have a pretty good garden every year, I never have a 'great year' with every single item in it. That's my ultimate dream veggie garden--one in which everything produces high yields in the same year. It probably never, ever will happen.

Dawn

My husband is so sweet. About two weeks ago I woke up and went to check the tomatoes. He'd gotten up before me and driven t-posts, attached PVC pipe them and had constructed a nice shade tent over them out of old white sheets. It has made so much difference, now that temps have risen over 100 and are likely to stay there.
AZ, NM and TX are having record dryness, along with winds, which are causing record fires. The humidity this week is at an all-time record low, 1-2%. between that and temps over 105, my tomatoes are just surviving. Crossing my fingers the monsoons bring some rain, not only for my garden, but to help the fire fighters. We have the worst fire ever, plus another in the top five, another two, one which just burned forty houses yesterday.
I'm sure you've all seen the smoke as it's getting over the Midwest. If you haven't, check out the red sunset, I'm sure it's colorful!