Hi Everyone! I could talk about tomatoes all day, especially when it is too hot to be outside! Patty, Large-fruited tomatoes (pretty much anything that makes tomatoes larger than ping pong balls) will bloom and set fruit (for the most part) only when daytime highs are lower than about 92 to 95 degrees AND nighttime temps are warmer than 55 but lower than 72. So, if you watch your temperatures every spring and fall, after a few years, you'll know by "how it feels outside" if your large-fruited tomatoes are going to set fruit or not. Some years in Oklahoma, that window of opportunity for fruit set is very small. Other years, it is better. This year, we went from "too cold" to "too hot" so quickly that a lot of people have had a disappointingly small OR late OR both fruit set. You WILL sometimes see flowers form at high temps and still not get fruit, and that is because the pollen gets sticky and won't move from one place to another within the flower. Shaking the plant or thumping the flowers sometimes helps you get fruit set in those cases. The foliage is ALWAYS beautiful in June. Partly it is because May and June usually have abundant rainfall, partly it is because diseases and insects haven't gotten to the plant yet, and sometimes it may be because the plant has been fed a high-nitrogen plant food. If nitrogen is giving you gorgeous foliage, it also is depriving you of fruit. As far as giving your plants the sunshine they need AND the shade that helps them survive the heat, I have found that my plants perform perfectly well, stay healthy, and produce plenty of fruit on only 6 to 8 hours a day. Since the sun comes up here at roughly 6:30 in the summer months, and sets at roughly 8 to 8:30, you could situate your plants where they get some shade from a fence, tree or building and it would help them more than it would hurt them, as long as they get 6 to 8 hours of sunlight. My favorite place to plant tomatoes gets sun from sunrise until about 2 or 3 p.m. and then gets some dappled shade from a large pecan tree. The section of the garden that gets shade from mid-afternoon on always produces more fruit later in the season, on both pepper and tomato plants, and I think it is because that late-afernoon shade helps them handle the heat. Also, with some shade, you're less likely to see sunscald on tomatoes, peppers, eggplant or melons. Ssimon, The heat-related fruit set problems I described above to Patty are probably why you have fruit on your cherry tomatoes, and there isn't much you can do about it except pray for a "cold front" to cool off your part of the state for a few days. The only way to beat the heat here in southern Oklahoma is to plant as early as is humanly possible, which for me means early March, about 3 weeks before our average last frost date. Once you plant early, you have to be willing to cover them up anytime the temps are going below 40 degrees (frost can form at 38 or 39 degrees if the conditions are just right). By planting early and protecting my plants, I usually get great fruit set, and am usually harvesting by late April. And, I have to emphasize, that getting ripe tomatoes by late April is my goal and everything I do is geared towards getting early fruitset. I also raise my own plants from seed, starting on Super Bowl weekend, and have very large, very healthy, very well-rooted plants by the time I set them out. THAT is the only way to beat the heat, because some years it gets too hot as early as May and greatly impedes fruit set. This May, we had a hard freeze at our house the first week of May, and then a couple of weeks later we had several days with high temperatures of 98 and 99 degrees. With weather like that, it is a wonder we have any tomatoes at all. For what it is worth, Black Krim and Cherokee Purple both USUALLY set fruit for me through mid-July, most years, and do set fruit later than many other tomatoes. This year has been odd, though, and neither of them is bearing as heavily as usual. Early blight is a perpetual problem in my garden, but not a huge problem. The more tomatoes you grow, the bigger a problem it is. I create most of my own problems by growing too many tomatoes, placed much too closely together. I do keep my plants pretty healthy by mulching heavily, organically amending the soil, watering with soaker hoses instead of an overhead sprinkler, etc. I do major companion planting and garden organically too, which helps. I'll always have some early blight, though, as long as I grow huge numbers of plants. This year, overall, if I were rating the current Early Blight problem on a scale from 1 to 10, with one being minor and ten being major, I'd say this year is a 1 or 2 so far. I have never lost a tomato plant to fusarian wilt or verticillium wilt, or to bacterial speck or spot, etc. I did lose one plant to southern blight in about 2000 or 2001, and lost one to curly top virus around 2003. I've never had trouble with Tomato Yellow Leaf Curl although it is has been found in Oklahoma (it is a devastating disease). Having early blight in our temperatures and humidity is not at all unusual and I can deal with it. I don't use chemical fungicides because they only buy you maybe 3 extra weeks of production and I just won't put chemicals on food we're going to eat, but that's just me. Everyone has to decide for themselves whether they are going to spray their plants for any problem, or not, and I am not saying my way is the best way--just that it is the method I have chosen. Mick, OK, you have me figured out. Somewhat. I have gardened my entire life (dad, uncles and grandparents were gardeners!) and the goal has always been to grow huge amounts of tomatoes to share with everyone we know. So, when I carry sackfuls of tomatoes to friends, family, neighbors, etc., I am just carrying on a family tradition. I HAVE really and truly cut back though. After we moved here, for the first time in my life I had all the room I needed to grow all the tomatoes we wanted. There was plenty of space to experiments with "new" ones. I have taken advantage of that to try many, many varieties in an effort to find the ones that (a) taste best and (b) grow best in our climate. Some years, I have had as many as 400 plants and 100 varieties. This year, it is about 70 varieties and a total of 140 plants for spring. In the fall, it will be fewer varieties and fewer plants, but still lots of them...and probably too many. For next year, I want to cut back to 50 varieties and 100 plants. Now that I know what grows here, and how well they do and how they taste, I am working on paring down the list to "the best" and "the most worthwhile". For a long time, tomatoes have dominated my garden and, even though I love tomatoes, I want to grow more of other stuff too. I gave up most cool-season crops like broccoli, spinach, cabbage and lettuce about 7 or 8 years ago because we couldn't keep the deer from devouring them in the late winter to early spring. Now that I have a deer-proof fence (so far!), I will be able to grow cool-season crops as well and that will take space away from the tomatoes. Will I ever go back to planting just a couple of varieties? Absolutely not. Heirloom and open-pollinated tomatoes make up the majority of my tomatoes and the only way I know to describe the flavor variations between them is to say that heirloom and OP tomatoes are like wines--every one has its own unique flavor. With hybrids, it seems that many (but not all) of them taste about the same as every other hybrid. And, while we are on the subject of wine, did you know that you can make wine from tomatoes? (I am a treasure trove of tomato trivia.) I would love to have two separate gardens, and be able to grow crops in one of them one year, and then rotate everything to the other garden the next year. In the "off" year, I could grow cover crops to enrich the soil, or cover and solarize the beds if needed. However, since I have brick-hard red clay that requires huge amounts of organic material to turn it into good soil, I don't think I'll ever have a second garden. It is hard enough to continually enrich and improve the existing garden. I don't practice very much crop rotation in my garden and, except for the problems with Early Blight, I don't seem to have any real problems that you could blame on a lack of rotation. But, since I don't rotate, I do work really hard in the "off-season" to put organic material and minerals back into the soil to keep it as healthy as possible. I have found that crop rotation is not AS necessary if you garden organically and work continually to put minerals and organic material back into the soil. Y'all, I picked well over 100 tomatoes today....but mostly cherry, grape and currant types. I think I only picked 8 or 10 or 12 "big ones". All those big tomatoes that have been green seemingly forever are starting to break color here, so if it is happening this far south now, then y'all should see it happening to your greenies in the next 10 to 14 days if not sooner. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Early Blight and Other Tomato Diseases

Ilene, I've been wondering where you'd been! I agree with you. I do think there is a big climate difference between extreme southern Oklahoma and northern Oklahoma, especially northeastern Oklahoma. For starters, we are are the 'sunny side of the Arbuckles', though you can't tell much difference this year! I think we get a little hotter, perhaps, in late July and early August of some years. Our first year here we had a string of 110 to 115 degree days in early August that lasted about a week, and I was ready to pack up and move back to Texas, where it 'only' gets to about 105, maybe 106 on very hot days. Most of the time y'all have higher humidity and higher rainfall. Y'all also have generally better soils and colder winters. We have earlier springs most years, and we have occasional days in January through March where the temps spike up into the 80s and even the 90s, which will make us think it is spring even though it is not. I don't know if your winter temps are as erratic as ours, or if they are more consistently winter-like? I think our frost-free growing season is a few days longer than yours, but not much. We do get away with pushing the envelope as far as planting early, because our late cold spells tend to be briefer and not as cold as your late cold spells. If you are familiar with the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex and its weather, ours is very, very similar to theirs--only slightly hotter in the summer and slightly colder in the winter. As far as whether you are a Yankee or not? I don't think so! I have to admit though, that when I was growing up in Texas, it was generally accepted that everyone who was NOT from Texas was, in fact, a damn Yankee! Now just find a single person in Texas who was even born in Texas! The Yankees have all moved south and become Texanized. Ilene, I was pinching back the lemon and lime basil earlier today because they are trying to flower and I am trying to stop them. I could pinch back basil all day--it smells so good. I have a big pot of tomatoes on the stove boiling down so I can make spaghetti sauce for dinner. In a few minutes I am going to run out to the garden and pick some Italian large leaf basil and some parsley to use. Yum. I am just like you--tired of the rain but afraid to say so out loud for fear I will jinx us and the rain will totally stop. It has happened to us before--we have gone from a VERY wet spring to a July and August where virtually no rain fell, and it is amazing how quickly the moisture in the ground dissipates! I hope they are careful with their water releases so your area doesn't have to deal with more flooding. Your little old lady friends sound so precious and sweet--I always liked the Baldwin sisters. When I was growing up we had a lot of older ladies like them and they got me addicted to gardening. I remember them working out in their yards and gardens wearing cotton housedresses in lovely floral prints, and very sensible shoes, and big straw hats, and very proper gardening gloves of course. I may be more comfortable in my jeans, T-shirts, baseball cap and hiking boots as I work in the garden.....but I don't look like a 'southern lady gardener' the way they used to! We've been fighting the grass too as it attempts to take over the world, especially in the beds where all the 'prety' stuff grows. It seems like all we do is mow and weedeat lately, in between rain showers, of course. I hate to say it, cause I'll jinx us, but not a drop of rain has fallen at our place today. There--I went ahead and said it--now it will probably start pouring down rain at any moment. :) I need to go gather some herbs. Talk to you all laer. Dawn

I got 25% (3/12) germination from my NAR seeds. The 3 that came up took about 2 weeks. They are also the weakest plants I have. 2 are the same as described by roper2008, stem with stuck seed coat. I softened up the seed coat and it slipped off. Those 2 are still pretty sickly looking. The third one has nice large cotyledon and a strong stem, but just the smallest buds of the first true leaves. I purchased mine from Diane's Seeds. I bought 5 varieties (plus 1 freebie). All the other varieties had 85%-100% germination. All others came up in less than 5 days expect Earl's Faux which was a slow poke at 10 days. I traded some of my seeds with my Dad who got his seeds from Harris Seeds. His were hybrids which came up in about 5 days with 90% germination. He hasn't planted any of my seeds yet. I germinated in a Jiffy greenhouse using Jiffy pellets at 75 degrees. I planted the remaining 7 of my NAR seeds a week ago. Nothing yet. Todd (long time lurker, first time poster)

Because of its late producing habit it therefore seems to be best to sow the seeds as early in the year as you possibly can, to try and gain a couple or three weeks over other varieties in order to get the best out of them- wonderful tomato couldn't get enough of them last season. **** I went to my SSE Yearbooks to see what ripening times other folks report and the range is about from 75-85 days from plant set out. That makes it, for me at least, a late midseason, early late season variety. So from the very first when I was given seeds for this variety I've never treated it differently than any of my other varieties when sowing seed. I sow all my seed around April 1st for plant out around June 1st, weather permitting, and that works out just fine in my zone 4/5/ I do sow my cherry tomatoes one week after the others b'c the latter usually grow faster. Oh, and that timing allows for about a week of hardening off time. It's very hard to know what you mean by being very late without knowing when you sow seeds and when you set out your plants, and in any given year the weather on your side of the pond can be quite different, as it can here in the US, wherever this variety is grown. For instance for me Aunt Gertie's Gold is always much later than NAR as are several of my other varieties. Since no two persons grow their tomatoes the same way, have the same soil, use the same amendments and have the same weather I think each person needs to discover for themselves what works best, and I've given some data for my area and indicated a range of DTM for others that have grown it and listed it in the SSE Yearbook. Carolyn