It was not a great tomato year. I planted 3 times as many plants as last year and got half as many tomatoes.

Raised bed with good soil had Indian Stripe - produced well and good taste, Goldman's Italian - made about 6 big fruits and I'm pretty sure plant is now dead. There is another in a pot, but no fruit on it. Pruden's Purple - it's a nice tomato, but I'm not as impressed as I thought I would be. Pink Bertoua - sprawling prolific plant that produced through the monsoons and the heat. It is not sweet. Salad sized. Pink Boar - love this tomato. Also small, dark purple with green shoulders and stripes/streaks, excellent taste and surprisingly prolific.

Raised bed with new dirt - no ripe tomatoes out of this YET! There are green ones now, but with decent dirt and weather should have been a winner. Here is Cherokee Purple, Arkansas Traveler, Box Car Willie, Grandma Suzy's Beefsteak, Sibirskiy Velikan Rozovyi. The basil is thriving here.

Large pots: Black Cherry didn't survive, I maybe got 6 off the plant. Pink ice - I broke it planting and it spent the summer in crappy soil and survived and produced. A second plant (mislabeled) did better in better soil. Pantano Romanesco Tomato - I'm supposed to be saving seeds for an exchange, but no fruit yet. Black Krim, replaced an OP Sungold that tasted so bad I pulled it up. It was one of the last planted, there may be green tomatoes on it now. Subartic plenty - considering it was bred for short cool seasons it did surprisingly well. I have gotten a couple of ripe fruit, lost some to tomato fruitworm. Large Red Cherry - this always produces and did well even this year. Texas Wild Cherry - sprawler, produced well, why am I not impressed? IDK, maybe in a drier season? Rand's Brandy - I thought this was going to die after I got about 3, but it has perked up and has green fruit. Whippersnapper Cherry - I gave one of these to a neighbor and she had good luck. Mine died. I have one in a solo cup now with a fruit on it. There is also a Pink Bertoua in one of these pots with green fruit but no ripe ones. Nebraska Wedding - prolific, cracked (all of them), favored by fruit worm. I put a Healani plant in about a month ago, it is growing nicely, but no fruit yet.

Straw bale planting, Planted late. These share a trellis with the pots and its hard to tell what tomato goes to which plant: #1 and #2 lost labels, Aunt Ruby's German green - may have fruit. Box Car Willie, Rutgers, "Not Manitoba" - I think this is Martino's Roma with a switched tag or it might be Opalka. Indian stripe, Cherokee Purple. There is actually a couple of fruit on this CP. [This experiment worked, but more like in ground plants with very deep mulch. I could tell when the roots hit the earth below, that is when the plants started to look good.]

5' Round Smart Pot Bed planted last. As I planted these, I was planning what I was going to replace them with when they died. They were some sad plants. It has Rutgers and Oplaka in it. Rutgers is making, I have seen a couple of Opalka fruit.

Prize for disease goes to Goldman's Italian. Randy's brandy is surviving early problems. Pruden's purple is kind of poorly looking. Does anyone else think potato leaf plants are more disease prone?

A Dr Wyches yellow disappeared after planting. May have been cut worms or didn't get watered well during the heat. I have some baby plants in solo cups that I probably shouldn't have started. Maybe in the greenhouse?

I'm getting restless. Having cataract surgery the 28th and have to be out of the garden for a week. These plants could go on till November, or ... I have brassica in solo cups with no where to go, LOL. I read if you break the roots by either pulling on the plant or cutting around it with a shovel that you can get them to think they are dying and hurry up and ripen some fruit. Considering that for the New Dirt bed where I planned to put fall brassica.

Ace 55 was a clear winner under neglected areas that, at the moment, has 4' tall Johnson grass and other weeds. And also in the tended garden bed. Great production no matter what or where.

Cherokee Purple is a tough plant. Remained disease-free. Production is easily stymied by stress, tho.

I never watered or fed in that one area. These are the winners. I will do them again.

I purchased a six-pack of Early Girls and got them in the ground early. Had to cover them with buckets a few times, but had tomatoes by mid-June. They produced pretty good considering all the rain. I'm still getting a few small tomatoes from a couple of them. Of the heirlooms that I started from seed, Gary O'Sena, Heidi, and Hungarian Italian Paste performed best. Most of my plants also succumbed to disease fairly early on. We had enough for fresh eating and I managed to can 7 pints of crushed tomatoes and 6 pints of pizza sauce.

Okiedawn, you mentioned that you staggered your tomato planting this year. Do you also stagger your seed starting activities? If so, when do you start and finish?

I did stagger my seed-starting slightly. I started most of them on Super Bowl Sunday,which is a long-standing tradition for me. I started more about 5 or 6 weeks later. I am in extreme southcentral OK with an average last frost date of March 28th, and often put my earliest plants in the ground in March, sometimes before the last frost date. (I use frost blankets to cover them if needed.) We generally harvest our first tomatoes (from plants bought at WalMart in late Jan or earliest Feb) the last week of April, and the first ones from home-grown plants a week to three weeks later depending on the weather. This week it rained so much, and nonstop, in March and April that I couldn't even get all the plants in the ground until May. Some of the plants were pretty big, in bloom, and even already had set tomatoes before I got them in the ground. I just worked around the standing water and rainfall when I could. I felt quite happy when I finally got the last plants in the ground, and then May dropped 25.5" of rain at our house, including close to 8" in one day. Our neighborhood and our portion of the county flooded, as did portions of the nearby town of Marietta. Because of the heavy rainfall, my planting was spread out over a longer time period than it normally is, but it all worked out in the end. My last plants probably went into the ground the first or second week of May, and I had to wear boots and stand in 6" of water in pathways to plant them. The plants themselves went into raised beds above the water level.

The 2015 season was a different one for me this year. This is the 6th
year I've grown tomatoes in my little backyard here in Tulsa. The first
4 years, I only grew in containers. For the 2014 season, I built two 4'
X 10' raised beds, and also had a couple of containers. But I switched
from 18 gal. plastic containers to 20 gal. Smart Pots. My strategy from
my first year was to mostly grow one plant of 12-15 different varieties to try
as many different ones as I could. 2015 was different for me in a
couple of ways. First, I started growing from seed. And second, I
decided to grow tomatoes that I already knew I liked, and to grow 2
plants each. I started seeds for Brandy Boy, Big Beef, Black Cherry,
Yellow 1884 Pinkheart, Jaune Flamme, Break O'Day, and what I thought was
Sun Sugar, and Super Sweet 100. Those last 2 ended up not being true to
seed. I was bummed about this, as Sun Sugar is my favorite. Whatever
seed I got that was supposed to be Sun Sugar was a small red cherry
instead. It was decent, but not Sun Sugar. Whatever was supposed to be
Super Sweet 100 seed, was instead a golf ball size red that was mealy
and bland all season.

I started my seeds on Feb. 14, and they
did fantastic. I moved them out to my "temporary" greenhouse (8' x 8')
around March 10. By the time I planted on April 8, most of my plants
were 18-24" tall and thriving. I planted a little early for Tulsa. It
helps being a Meteorologist and knowing what the likely weather will be
for the next couple of weeks. ;-) My plants were thriving until the
rains came......and came.....and came some more. We didn't have it as
bad as Dawn did down south, but we still had way too much. I started
getting the first ripening fruit on a few of them the week before
Memorial Day. Jaune Flamme, Break O'Day and Yellow 1884 were the first
to ripen. The other varieties started ripening the next week. All of the
fruit that ripened before June 6th or so were very watery. We had that
dry spell during the first couple of weeks of June, and that helped a
lot.

I also tried a little experiment with my cherries this year.
I said I had 2 plants of all of my varieties, so I decided to do one of
each cherry in the raised bed and one in a Smart Pot to see if there
was a difference in taste. I can report that there was not a significant
difference in taste for Black Cherry, not-Sun Sugar, and not-Super
Sweet 100. They all tasted the same whether from the Smart pot or the
bed. The only difference in the cherries was the Black Cherry in the
Smart Pot succumbed to Gray Mold about 3 weeks quicker than the one in
the raised bed.

Like I'm sure most of you experienced, the
disease pressure was much higher this year than normal, due to the heavy
rain. I normally get Gray Mold on any of the Blacks I've tried. And I
usually eventually get Early Blight to some degree on all the others. It
was quite a bit faster this year. And to top it all off, around July
4th, my neighbor behind me decided to use Round Up all over his backyard
to kill his bermuda and do some landscaping. My tomato plants did not
like this one bit. They all died within a week. I was pretty mad at
first, but luckily, they were mostly played out by then. So the loses
weren't too bad. I didn't have too many fruit left. It would have been a
different story if it was June 4, instead. I guess that's the risk you
take when you garden in the middle of town.

BRANDY BOY - This one was my only new variety. These
did well overall, but I probably will not grow again. I know
this sounds crazy, but I'm just not a huge fan of the Brandywine taste.
Call me crazy, I know. I grew a Brandywine back in 2012 in a container
and they all tasted watery and bland to me. And it got Early Blight
quicker than others that year. On a whim, I decided to try Brandy Boy
this year in the bed. Both plants produced about 20 good-sized beefsteaks. I still just wasn't crazy about the taste. If you like
Brandywine, these may be worth a try. Definitely had better disease
resistance than Brandywine, at least in my case.

BIG BEEF - These
did great for me, and I plan to always grow this one. The taste isn't
"knock your socks off", but it's very good for a hybrid. And they produce like crazy. This
was my second year growing it. Every year, each plant has pumped out at
least 35 fruit. Most were in the 8-16 oz. range. And for what it's worth, these 2 plants were the last
to die from the Round Up accident.

BREAK O'DAY - This variety is
probably my favorite pink. There's something about the "zing" in the
flavor that my wife and I both really like. I've grown this one all 6
years and will continue. It's a little bit smaller plant (4'), but it
pumps out the tomatoes. I've always had at least 30 from every plant. In
2012, I got over 60 from one plant before it finally gave out.

BLACK
CHERRY - Another staple that I've grown every year. I love this cherry tomato. Not much to say about this one. It's a very popular tomato, and it always lives up to its reputation for me. The only negative about these is they are susceptible to Gray Mold, typical for Black Tomatoes.
I had hundreds of fruit from each plant before they died. Both plants were huge, as usual.

YELLOW 1884 PINKHEART - This is a creation from The Tomatoman here in Tulsa, and I think it is only available through The Tomatoman's Daughter. It's another tomato that I grow every year. It typically produces 8-16 oz. yellow beefsteaks with pink in the middle when fully ripe. This is my favorite beefsteak. It's flavor is hard to describe, maybe creamy-sweet, almost buttery. I know it sounds weird, but it is oh so good. Every person I've given one to has commented on how good it tastes. The first few this year were watery, but after that, they were fantastic. I got about 25 from each plant. I had 2 huge fruit this year, too, which was new. One was 21.9 oz. and another was 20.7. Lisa (the Tomatoman's Daughter) said she'd never heard of ones that big.

JAUNE FLAMME - This one is an orange, golf ball size tomato that is very juicy, sweet and tangy. I've grown this one every year. When I grew them in containers, they had quite a bit of blossom end rot. I haven't had that problem in the raised beds. These are early and very productive. I lost count on these this year, but I think each plant produced at least 75.

I'm not going to go into the not-Sun Sugar and not-Super Sweet 100. I took a chance and ordered the not-Sun Sugar seed from Amazon. That was a mistake that I will not make again. The not-Super Sweet 100 seed actually came from Burpee. They emailed me about a month ago saying there was a mistake in their production of Super Sweet 100 seeds this year, and offered to send me new seeds early next year. I'll give those another try, but will likely not order from them again.

I've got a Black Cherry, 4th of July OP, Jaune Flamme, Green Zebra, Break O'Day, Yellow 1884 PH, and Johnny Joe's going in the garden for Fall. I planted out on July 10. I've already had a couple ripen, and have several fruit growing on all of them. I had worms really bad on these in late July. I sprayed a couple of rounds of Bt, and haven't seen any since. Hopefully I'll get some good production before our first freeze.

So overall, it was a decent year. It wasn't my best year for sure, but I guess it could have been worse. The rain was too much and lead to more disease than normal. And the Round Up incident lead to a premature end to my season. But I grew from seed for the first time this year, and successfully, I might add. So I'm going to say this season was a success.

I look forward to seeing other reports, too.

Lee

Lee, I'm glad you mentioned the gray mold on black tomato varieties. For many years---probably from 1999-2011, it was not a problem here at all. I might see gray mold on one plant a year, and it was not necessarily on a black variety. Then it started showing up on Black Cherry every year, and much worse in wet years than dry years. This year it was on a lot of the black varieties (admittedly, I had almost all the black types in a single row in a raised bed so it likely just spread plant to plant) before the end of June. The gray mold seemed unstoppable on the black varieties, but the ones that were potato-leaved rebounded after a while and put out new growth that was healthy. Since the rain had stopped by then, they stayed healthy. The regular-leaved ones did not survive. The varieties from The Dwarf Project, whether black varieties or other colors, resisted the gray mold the longest time, but it eventually got them too.

I am going to rotate all my tomato plants, Lord willing and if the creek don't rise and if El Nino doesn't keep us flooded all winter, to the back garden where no tomatoes were grown this year or last year. In order to make that happen, I will have to build raised beds lined with hardware cloth because the back garden is mostly sandy soil and we have a Vole Empire running everything back there. I really need to give the front garden a break from plants in the solanum family because I've grown them there every single year since 1999. I'm not good at rotating plants (because I grow so many tomatoes and peppers that virtually every raised bed has some of them in it every year), but after this disease-filled year, I really need to rotate properly next year.

Dawn