I would think that any new fruit that set going forward in a northern climate would not have time to ripen until mid October which is probably a couple weeks after your first frost. And as you mentioned, fruit that ripen in cool weather are often poor quality.

You may be running out of time to plant out many things in zone 4/5 so you better make the decision to yank or not soon. I just started my weekly plantings of fall radishes last Sunday. They grow really fast in warm soil...like 3 weeks from seed to harvest.

What would you replace it with? Too late to plant most things in your zone probably. Radishes and fast greens. Check out Johnny's winter harvest guide which has seed starting dates based on day length. Also take into account they are based on full sun.

I planted lettuce and spinach last weekend and that's it for me, too late to plant anything else.

I already have some mature zucchini in 5 and 10 gallon pots that would appreciate some better sunlight, they are cramped into a pretty dense area. I don't have anything new for these gaps just rearranging to better optimize space. At my community garden I have some cabbage seedlings going in soon that I'm going to try this year.

I think that Lone Jack is right. It would take around 40 days from the first sign of a flower bud until ripe fruit. I was thinking the same thing myself as I was cleaning up dead leaves on my plants this morning and wondering about snipping off some suckers with no fruit on them. Then again, what if we have a wonderful warm fall????? I'd say that if you don't care that much about the variety, pull it.

Thanks for the confirmation, I have a couple large tomato fruit bearing plants with nothing at all going on. Time to get a jump on the clean up.