I am not in OKC so my info may not help you, but I picked up about a dozen fall tomato plants two weeks ago--getting 3 or 4 each from Lowe's, Home Depot and Wal-Mart here in southern OK. None of those stores currently have plants--they cleared them out the week after I bought mine. I hope the stores in OKC still have plants and think it likely that nurseries will have some even if big box stores do not.

I raised the rest of my fall plants from seed planted the first week in June.

If the peppers have made it this far in pots, they'll probably be fine. There is a chance they are root-bound from being in containers for so long, but they should adapt well once you transplant them into the ground (or into larger containers). Just look carefully at them before you buy them and don't purchase them if they appear diseased.

Dawn

I do live in Norman, work OKC and drive thru Moore to get there! I haven't seen ANY tomatoe or pepper plants in Walmart or Lowes, but last week Home Depot still had some. (that is the Moore location). While you're here, you might check out some of the smaller nurserys. I think the one by me (K&K on S. Sooner Road) might still have some also. I'll let you know if I notice any over the weekend if I get out!

Paula

Anyone planning to buy from the Tomato Man's Daughter in Tulsa, be sure to check the web site first. She said that the local paper ran a story and she almost sold out yesterday. Only had a few flats left so she wasn't going to open this Satuday. She said she would have more on the 30th.

Carol,

Isn't that amazing? Good for her. I bet she'll have twice as many next fall.

I also wonder if the pitiful weather that has been so hard on tomato plants this year has encouraged more people to try fresh plants for the fall?

There was an article in either the Dallas or Fort Worth paper earlier this week that reminded everyone that "now" is the time to get your fall plants. Then, they followed the article with a list of 20 or 30 area nurseries that had tomatoes in stock for fall planting.

I was just about sick with envy. It isn't even that I need more plants....I have plenty, and the spring ones are still going strong. It was just that it sounded so wonderful to think that there were so many options available in the D-FW metroplex. (Of course, there's about 6 million people there, so there are a lot of gardeners and a lot of nurseries.)

It is great to see so many people planting for fall!

Dawn

Grr... Frustrated.

I can't find tomatoes anywhere. I am a bit concerned about buying them from lowes, walmart, etc. because of the late blight issue, even so, I haven't found any at those places anyway.

I really want to shop locally but in my small town, nobody has anything! Especially when it comes to trying to garden organically.

I asked the feed and seed fella if he had horticultural cornmeal and he just looked at me like I was an idiot. The only compost I can find is cotton burr from walmart.

I went to K&K in Norman, great place and Ellis in norman also, another great place but nobody has tomatoes.

Anyway, sorry for griping... just feeling frustrated.

Hi, You might try Sunrise Acres in Newcastle. I usually buy fall tomatoes from them. You might call or send an e-mail first to make sure they still have some.
Their web address is home.att.net/~sunriseacres

I'd forgotten about Sunrise Acres.

Sunrise Acres sells transplants in the spring at the OKC-OSU Farmer's Market and has done so for years, but I don't know if they sell fall tomato transplants. I hope they do. They also sell produce and are members of the Oklahoma Co-op.

I met the owner of Sunrise Acres at the Organic Home and Garden Show in OKC a couple of years ago, and he showed me a list of several dozen heirloom tomato transplants that he raises and sells every spring. It was an impressive list.

Click on the link to see their website.

Here is a link that might be useful: Sunrise Acres' Website

Carol,

Do you know if any place close to Grove has any tomatoes? I'm also in Grove and didn't want to drive to Tulsa for just a 4 or 5 plants (have SFG and not wanting to use all my trellis space for tomatoes).

Thanks,
Randy

How funny you guys recommended Sunrise Acres!!! We got our sweet potatoe slips from them this year! The man was the most knowledgable person about growing regular and sweet potatoes. My DH credits him with our bumper potatoe crop this year. DH also suggested him when I told him about this post. Since he's got 2 large greenhouses, he just might have tomatoes and maybe even ship them! Worth a try!

Paula

When all else fails, (like where I live), and can't find any fall tomato plants ANYWHERE, I'm taking some cuttings from my early tomatos. The ones left I had started from seed don't seem to be large enough to be able to make it before frost.

Barbara

I hope you use better judgement than I did. About two weeks ago I was calling around trying to find tomatoes. I found some in Ft. Smith so I decited to go in to the farmers coop. I only bought two because the ones that looked ok were $4.50 ea. Two tomatoes, $6.00 bucks for gas and $10.00 bucks for a yard of compost that had more plastic in it than compost. I now have $25.+ in two tomato plants that may not produce anything.

The compost at the Ft. Smith landfill is getting unfit to even haul home. Larry

Okiefamily,

I think it highly unlikely that plants from a nationwide wholesaler, like Bonnie Plants for example, that you would find in Oklahoma at this time of year would have late blight this time of year if that is the 'blight' you are concered about.

The plants in the northeast that have had late blight this year became infected during an abnormal spell of prolonged cool, cloudy weather that we just aren't having here. (Our 'cool and cloudy' is still pretty much too hot for late blight to develop and spread.)

Also, Bonnie Plants produces their plants at multiple locations--I think I read somewhere that they have 19 separate growing locations--and I doubt our plants would come from the same locations that produced this year's infected plants.

And, even though diseased Bonnie Plants were found in stores, no diseased plants were found in any Bonnie facility as far as I know, so the infection (which is airborne) could have hit the plants while they were at the stores. My best guess is that Bonnie uses preventive spraying with fungicides and that the plant infections occurred after the plants had been out of the Bonnie facilities for over a week and hadn't had a recent spraying.

If it is early blight, that is pretty widespread but you normally don't find it on young plants since it tends to appear as the plants are enlarging and carrying a heavy fruit load.

So, if you can find plants ANYWHERE, I'd say go ahead and buy them.

Paula,

I spoke with the owner of Sunrise Acres for about a half-hour at that Organic Garden Show a few years back and he struck me as incredibly knowledgeable. I was truly excited to meet him and see his plants and told him the only reason I wasn't buying any of his plants that day was because I was already raising over 100 varieties from seed. And, before anyone asks, he and I did have a lot of the same varieties growing that year....which probably was around 2005.

Dawn

Dawn and others...
I've been listening to too much NPR and reading too much on the internet, so I have blight paranoia. I guess I am being overly concerned.

Fall tomato plants are scarcer than hen's teeth in my neck of the woods. So, yesterday, I cut some nice size clones from some of my early varieties, stuck them individually in their own jars of unclorinated well water, put them in a lightly shaded window and covered them each with plastic wrap that I just stuck to the window and kind of draped it down over them. Knock on wood but today they're still looking perky and I'm thinking they'll make it. I've never done this before, so I'm wondering if I need to put a pinch of TomatoTone in the jars or not?
Waiting with baited breath...
Barbara

Okiefamily,

I understand. I like to lurk at the Tomato Forum although I seldom if ever post there. (For one thing, once I started, I'd never stop and then I wouldn't have time to actually grow anything.) If you read all the late blight stuff there, it makes you so paranoid that you want to run out and look at your plants every 5 minutes to make sure they are OK.

If I lived in the northeastern or eastern states (and the list does continue to grow) where late blight exists and is spreading, I know I'd be so depressed. The worst thing is that once you have it, you cannot stop it, although I know some people are trying to keep their plants alive long enough to produce.

Barbara, My seedlings raised from seed here at the house are pitiful this year. They have not liked the sun and heat and humidity at all this summer and I am disgusted with them all. I actually threw most of them on the compost pile this morning and said "good riddance". There's no way they'll be big enough to set fruit this year.

The good part to the story, though, is that most of my spring plants look so great and are producing so well that they don't need to be replaced and, in fact, I doubt I could make myself remove them even if I had 2' tall seedlings to take their place. I am going to plant a dozen or two fall tomatoes to replace the least healthy of the current plants. I only get to carry over the spring plants to fall about 1 or 2 years in 10, so this is a really good year.

I like raising new plants from cuttings, but won't do it this year since I don't have space for a lot. I hope yours do well. I think that cutting-grown plants produce more quickly than seedlings anyway.

Dawn

Randy - Sorry, I hadn't read this thread for several days so I hadn't seen your question. No, I didn't find any that I would buy. Wal-mart had a few but the only ones that looked healthy the day I was there were patio plants and a couple of Celebrity. Next door they had some also but they were far from healthy looking.

I had a few left over from spring planting that had survived the entire summer in a cup. I decided if they wanted to live that badly then I would just help them out. I picked out the best seven plants, sprayed them with Daconil and planted them in the garden. All are growing and look healthy, but I don't know if they will have time to produce. Since they were free and available, I didn't worry about it too much. The plants in town were $3.50 to $5.00. I might have worried a little if I had bought 7 at that price and they froze out without producing. LOL

You may have seen some of my other postings where I said that most of my markers washed off this year so except for a few, I had no idea what kind of plants I transplanted. Since I was growing only in containers for spring, I had a lot of transplants left over. I almost always do, but this year I had a lot even after I shared with the neighbors. I put these last seven in the garden down the long side of a cattle panel. They will grow taller than the panel, but that is OK. I don't have nearly enough tomato cages and they are all in use. I have a lot of those cheap big box store kind but they are all on peppers. The last time I planted peppers in my garden, they got so loaded that I had a couple that just fell over and pulled the roots out of the ground. Last year I had them all in containers and started out that way this year. All of those hot days were wilting them down so I moved them all to the garden. They still get a little wilty mid-day but liven up again after the sun goes down.

There are several of us from the Grove area that post on this forum. One out by Sailboat and another down toward Zena, I think. Last year there was a frequent poster named Mick that lived in Fairland, but I haven't seen him post this year.

Well, I am officially giving up on looking for fall tomatoes. I called sunrise acres, went to K&K, called every roadside plant stand I drove by, checked at multiple home depots and lowes and nary a plant. Next year I will make sure I start some from seed.

My cuttings are in the ground and looking perky so I will just hope that that works. I think the rain and cooler weather may have given them the head start they needed.

Good thing you took the cuttings, isn't it?

At least we have tomatoes here. The Late Blight news keeps getting worse and reportedly Late Blight has made its way as far south as northern Georgia.

I used to buy fall tomatoes at the Ft. Smith Coop, but this year I just broke off a few suckers and stuck them in the ground in the garden (even in the hot sun). Guess what? They rooted and now have flowers on one of them. I will report if I harvest tomatoes off the plants.(I did water every morning and evening) James

Carol,

Thanks for the update. I think I'll take a sucker or three off one of spring tomatoes and see how they'll do. So far, between the groundhog and weather (I guess) my tomato production has been very poor. Good news is I haven't seen the 'hog in over a week.

I'm smack dab in the middle of town, 3 blocks from the school, downtown & Harps. The house is too small, but the yard has room for lots of raised beds and gets lots of sun. What more could I ask?

Randy