You might want to ask the folks over on the Florida gardening forum what most of them do. You are lucky enough, at least most of FL is, to have two good tomato growing seasons while most of the rest of us only have the one. But you may have a really long heat season between them so I'm guessing that most would start fresh plants.

Personally I try to baby my plants through the worst of our HOT weather period with extra care, water, feeding, and some shade where possible. I know the weather will break off and on during that time and I can get some fruit set. Then when it finally breaks for good I still have time to get good production from the healthy ones before freeze.

Dave

You can paint the flowers with a solution of certain chemical plant growth regulators (PGR). See

http://www.jircas.affrc.go.jp/english/publication/jarq/39-2/39-02-09.pdf

http://www.banglajol.info/index.php/PA/article/viewFile/24512/16632

https://www.jstor.org/stable/2472448?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

You can buy these PGR inexpensively here:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/like/131798293873?lpid=82&chn=ps&ul_noapp=true

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Gibberellic-Acid-GA3-90-5g-plant-hormone-PGR-Tissue-Culture-TC/131841122919?_trksid=p2141725.c100338.m3726&_trkparms=aid%3D222007%26algo%3DSIC.MBE%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D20150313114020%26meid%3D65a1e833a8f34f0c951fb0c3e4b26e96%26pid%3D100338%26rk%3D4%26rkt%3D5%26sd%3D131798293873

I have bought from this seller several times before and delivery was always a little slow but otherwise fine.

Hey Dave,

I posted this over in the Florida forum, but that forum is not as active as this one. Also most of my plants are in 5gal containers ( I now know they are too small for some of my varieties ) so I'm not sure if letting them continue to grow in the containersis going to benefit them, I'm going with bigger containers next time since I can definitely see the difference in growth between my raised bed tomatoes and container tomatoes. Also I have 72 new seedlings growing ready to plant when the time comes. I'm definitely going to let the raised beds continue to grow, but not the the containers ( maybe a couple just to see what they do). Anyways I've learned a lot these past couple months about growing tomatoes, so thanks for all the advice

Does that actually work Aruzinsky, I've been using blossom set spray and using an electric toothbrush, trying to get new blossoms to set, but haven't had any real results that I can clearly see.

Yes, it would be interesting to get some home gardener perspective on Giberrellic Acid. Be aware that It is supposed to increase parthenocarpic fruit development. So if you want to save seeds, it's probably not for you.

"Does that actually work Aruzinsky"

I never tried it because I don't have high temperature tomato problems in the Chicago area.

You might ask someone in Nevada, http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/nvgard .

The NV forum is pretty dead. What I know: Southern NV generally you want to do two seasons, akin to FL. Most people I know rip out the plants and plant new ones. The temps are just too darn high. A quick search of the Ag extension publications advises:

"Temperatures that are higher than 90° F during the day (southern Nevada averages 150 such days a year) are the main cause of blossom drop. In fact, temperatures over 104° F for four hours or more cause the flowers to abort. Night temperatures higher than 75° F will also cause blossom abortion. These sustained, hot temperatures at night burn up the food reserves the tomato produced during the day and the flowers abort. There is no chemical growth regulator that will help set fruit under these conditions." (Source here.)

Not sure how relevant this is to FL growing, however. Humidity is pretty much nonexistent and soils tend to have very different problems.

You can rip out your plants and then replant in the fall or you can nurse your plants through the summer and they'll produce again in the fall. It's up to you.

If if you try to pollinate the flowers, make sure you do it at dawn. It works better in the cool of first thing in the morning.

Nursing tomato plants through our heat and humidity is something I only did once. Now I pull the plants in July. That's also the time to put in transplants for the fall garden.

I am in Florida and the rain is helping my tomatoes. I have mine in a 5 gallon self-watering pot and it is in part shade. I planted them not to deep when they were babies and as they grow I kept adding dirt.

June gloom has arrived in Southern CA. My volunteer tomatoes (from the compost) are growing happily but didn't set fruit because we had a major heat wave a couple weeks ago. Now it's very cool, but I just looked at the 10 day forecast. Gonna be 110-113 in 10 days. My tomato dreams are gone. Bring on the Okra and Black Eyed Peas!

This is actually my first year growing Tomatoes, but I am located in Destin and things have been fine so far. I started our tomato plant ( beefsteak tomato potted on our balcony) early March and it's almost 6 ft tall with about 8-10 tomatoes growing on it now. I've done a lot of reading about the topic since I was afraid of running into the same problems with the heat/moisture not letting the tomatoes set fruit. Do you still have a good amount of flowers on the plant? I started feeding our tomato some bloom accelerator (about every 7 days) and it has worked wonders so far. We also make it a habit to water our tomato in the morning and then give the flowers a good shake to help them pollinate.

Diehlt - I still have plenty of flowers blooming, the thing is I am getting some fruit to set, but it's like maybe four fruits set in a truss of 9 or more, the fruit I have already harvested were full trusses of fruit, so their is definitely a decline of fruit setting. I too wake up in the morning when it is cool and have used various methods of trying to get fruit to set like blossom set and electric toothbrush, and straight up rattling the branches and cages. This is my first year at growing tomatoes, I think I've been pretty sucessful, I just think I can get better yields. This season has been a learning experience. I already have started new tomato plants from seed for plant out come july, so hopefully I'll get some better results. Good luck.