setting fruit over 90F?

[edweather]

Our Big Beef, and Creole have been setting fruit all spring and summer so far..

[Dewayne mater]

Poppycock. 90 is just fine, so long as it cools off as you mention it does at night. I'm convinced that the night time temps are more important that the day time. It must cool off though.

Here is N. Texas most years once it gets hot it just stays hot 24/7 with minimal cool down, typically still in the 80s at the coolest point - about 7 a.m.. Joyfully, we set some records today with overnights as cool at 65! Humidity is a factor bc 90 plus high humidity seems to cause more pollen clumping and less fruit set. I'm not saying 90 plus is ideal, it is not. But, the tomatoes I have ripening now and that is several dozen all beefsteak heirloom tomatoes were 100% all set when daytime temps were 90 plus. I also subscribe to Bill's method of keep the stems down to a couple and sometimes when I prune a bunch of suckers, I notice an immediate fruit set shortly thereafter. I think the plant just pruned will often turn its energy on fruit production and growth instead of plant growth.

His list is fantastic. I would say that many commercial varieties are bred specifically to set fruit in high temps. The only one of them that I find worth a garden spot is Porter. Also, plum types, I only grow San Marzano bc that's the official Italian paste tomato, will set fruit in high heat and cherry types are better at it too.

Finally, check your garden. If you have a full sun, low wind, urban heat trap garden like one of mine is, sun shade cloth is essential from mid June through mid September. That can provide substantial temperature relief that plants seem to need in hot micro climate.

Don't accept defeat! Challenge conventionally thinking. Only those who go against conventional thinking discover new things. Good luck.

[Gerardo]

Sorry to hear your babies got baked AKMark, it hurts us all. Mine have handled our stifling conditions relatively well and are setting fruit. Yesterday the sun was intense, by 8 am it was in the high 80s, by 2 pm in the high 90s with the hair dryer wind effect if at all, no real wilt at 2 pm, thanks to sub-irrigation. I toned down the ppm so they could drink heavily.


Definitely acquiring the shade cloth. However, shade sails around the house are first priority, tis a hot one this year.



Did you install 50 % shade cloth?

[Barb_FL]

My season is finally over; but we had a hotter June than July with several days in the mid 90s and night time lows over 80.

The plant that kept setting fruit in the heat (this one had the most sun from AM to PM too) was Grandeur (seeds purchased from Kitazawa Seed Co).

There was 30ish tomatoes at a time; It did much better than HeatMaster where once it got hot, the tomato size was inversely related to the temperature.

Tomatoes aside, in my weather, I actually feel more tolerant of 90+ weather than in the 80's (I don't know why; maybe the UV is higher in the spring or something, but either way, I feel like the sun is burning my eyes and stuff, and it exhausts me, but when it gets above 90, I don't feel that, but it actually feels good, unless there's smoke in the air or something; we had a cooler spring than normal, this year—I noticed it a lot). I do get more sluggish if it's quite hot, though. The tomatoes, however, seem to prefer exactly 89° F. earlier in the season for the most part, for foliar growth and fruit set. Some like it a bit warmer. Cooler temperatures than 90 seem to help them get more growth on when the heat does come. I think the hot and cold periods help bring nutrients into the plant or something. (Same for day and night temperatures.) Potassium is supposed to be more available when it's cool (and more needed when it's hot); phosphorus is said to be the inverse. I believe magnesium is like potassium there.

[DonDuck]

I've backed off some on planting open pollinated plants. I suppose fighting the various fungus diseases in the early summer with cool moist weather and replanting for a fall crop when the really hot weather is over made me look at some hybrid's again.


I planted Heatmaster in 110 degree weather last year with low expectations. It started blooming and setting fruit immediately. It was very productive until the first frost of fall. The bonus was the tomatoes tasted great. Many folks I gave tomatoes too said they were the best they have eaten.


This year, I grew Heatmaster from seed. The seeds were pretty expensive at eight or ten seeds for three or four dollars. I've only seen seedlings for sale a couple of times. When I see the plants for sale, I buy a lot of them. I was curious how they would perform in the cool, moist air of early spring. Other varieties were turning yellow and dyeing from fungus. Even Big Beef struggled, but most of them survived and will produce in the fall. Heatmaster didn't have any problem with the fungal diseases and produced well. This summer has been much cooler than last summer. Heatmaster is supposed to be a determinate tomato. I expected them to produce and die. They produced well, slowed down a little in the hot weather and started blooming on new growth again while setting fruit . I've also planted Phoenix and Tycoon and a few other "hot weather" hybrids in this hot summer to see how well they perform compared to Heatmaster.


Bonnie brand sometimes has Heatmaster at the big box stores at $3.95 each. I buy mine at a small farm store at $1.50 each grown at Baby's nursery in south Texas.

[habitat_gardener]

Of the 21 varieties I planted in late May, the plants with most fruit set are
Indian Stripe PL, 10+
Big Cheef, 12+ and getting large
Mat-Su Express, 9+

cherries and smaller varieties planted late May, for comparison:
Sunsugar, 50+
Brad's Atomic Grape, 12+
Tommy Toe, 15+ (in a shadier spot, but very close to Mat-Su Express!)

Of the 14 I planted in mid-May, good fruit set on
Cherokee Purple, 8+
Marzano Fire, 40+
Rose de Berne, 20+

I have most of my (16) cherry and saladette varieties in a different location in containers; they were planted In early June. No more than 5 tomatoes have set on any of them so far.

I'm most surprised by Rose de Berne. I've grown it before, in a cooler climate (70s-80s daytime temps instead of 90s-100s), and it was the most consistent variety I'd ever grown -- there were always tomatoes ready to pick. It was also the only plant that kept going in a partly shaded location. I thought the flavor was ok, not superlative, but the production was excellent. This year, it's in full hot scorching sun. It will be interesting to see if the flavor is different.

Marzano Fire is another surprise. I have several other paste varieties, but this is by far the earliest.

Next year I will have to put in a few plants by late March! I planted quite late this year.

[NarnianGarden]

We were hit by a heat wave in Finland and the temps rose to 28 C (around 82 F) .. this of course is nothing to many of you living in places like Florida or Texas, but for us it has been quite an ordeal :-) as well as for the tomato plants.

Last summer was like this several weeks in a row, and many plants stalled and stopped tomato production altogether. Hopefully this one didn't affect them that much.
I was foolish again to sow other than cherry / grape varieties. All the smaller fruited vaieties seem to be doing fine, but some large beef steak ones are not looking good... Rose for example has dropped all its little green nobs and it is almost August :-(

Ah well, varieties like Lucky tiger, Brad's atomic grape and some Russian hybrids are thriving.

Originally Posted by habitat_gardener

I'm most surprised by Rose de Berne. I've grown it before, in a cooler climate (70s-80s daytime temps instead of 90s-100s), and it was the most consistent variety I'd ever grown -- there were always tomatoes ready to pick. It was also the only plant that kept going in a partly shaded location. I thought the flavor was ok, not superlative, but the production was excellent. This year, it's in full hot scorching sun. It will be interesting to see if the flavor is different.

Now I want to grow Rose de Berne.

[Dak]

We've been in a heat wave (heat advisory in effect, afternoon temperatures from 97 to 107 degrees) and surprisingly my Costuluto Genovese is still setting fruit.I think our cooler nights are what's doing it, it's getting down to the mid to low 50's at night.

[slugworth]

I have the genuwine;it's a cross between that and brandywine.
So far so good.

[b54red]

It took most of the day yesterday but I managed to feed all my tomatoes with TTF and also added a follow up of a good watering. While I was doing it I studied my plants and realized I will have to do some more pruning over the next few days as I have let too many suckers get going without realizing it. I also counted fruit on some of the more loaded plants and with several Indian Stripe PL plants in my mix I noticed that most of them were loaded with fruit. No other variety does this well in our very hot mid and late summer although Spudakee comes close sometimes.

The only plant that had really poor fruit set was Omar's Lebanese. This is the first time I tried it as a late plant. I do this with several varieties each year just to see which will do well and which won't in the summer heat. I also tried Akers West Virginia as a late summer/fall plant and it is loading up quite nicely so if all goes well it may be in my late summer/ fall rotation.

Now that I have gotten fairly good at figuring out what to plant and how to plant for late season production in the heat I wonder if I can get them to produce larger fruit than usual this time of the year. I have found that even when the tomatoes do exceptionally well in the heat that I get very few large fruits during this time. It may be that I let too many fruit set because that is the biggest obstacle to overcome. I have noticed with no surprise that just like in the spring and early summer the plants with fewer fruit have larger fruit in general. Even so the fruit is so much smaller than in the early part of the season with most being tennis ball size with a few larger ones but few over a pound. It may not be possible to get much size increase with the heat down here stressing the plants, along with the constant battle against pests and disease. Some of the ones producing the largest fruit this time of the year are Kentucky Wonder, Brandywine Cowlick's, and Arkansas Traveler.

I have not had much improvement with the use of shade cloth. When I first tried it I thought it would make a huge difference but it ended up being more trouble than it was worth. I can live with a few sun scaled fruits on both my tomatoes and peppers easier than I can set up a good screen. I also found that with our humidity that diseases seemed worse under shade cloth when compared to beds unprotected. I think shade cloth might be more productive where the humidity wasn't so high and it would be much better if it could be mounted at least 10 feet up to allow better airflow.

Bill

Bill

[Fred Hempel]

Good to see Marzano Fire performing well in heat.

For us, it is also going well this fall, under cool temperatures.

Flavor is still good too... cooked.

Originally Posted by habitat_gardener

Of the 21 varieties I planted in late May, the plants with most fruit set are
Indian Stripe PL, 10+
Big Cheef, 12+ and getting large
Mat-Su Express, 9+

cherries and smaller varieties planted late May, for comparison:
Sunsugar, 50+
Brad's Atomic Grape, 12+
Tommy Toe, 15+ (in a shadier spot, but very close to Mat-Su Express!)

Of the 14 I planted in mid-May, good fruit set on
Cherokee Purple, 8+
Marzano Fire, 40+
Rose de Berne, 20+

I have most of my (16) cherry and saladette varieties in a different location in containers; they were planted In early June. No more than 5 tomatoes have set on any of them so far.

I'm most surprised by Rose de Berne. I've grown it before, in a cooler climate (70s-80s daytime temps instead of 90s-100s), and it was the most consistent variety I'd ever grown -- there were always tomatoes ready to pick. It was also the only plant that kept going in a partly shaded location. I thought the flavor was ok, not superlative, but the production was excellent. This year, it's in full hot scorching sun. It will be interesting to see if the flavor is different.

Marzano Fire is another surprise. I have several other paste varieties, but this is by far the earliest.

Next year I will have to put in a few plants by late March! I planted quite late this year.

[hl2601]

In Colorado we battle high temperatures, very dry conditions, wind, plus growing at high altitude. Some varieties that have been prolific in my garden under these conditions are:
Mocha Splash
Indian Stripe PL
Dwarf Velvet Night
Amurskyi Tigr
Large Barred Boar
Rosovyi Krupnyi
Lithium Sunset
Lucid Gem
Orange Russian 117
Chocolate Stripes
Lucky Tiger
My cherries also have done very well with two exceptions-Gajo de Melon and Dancing with Smurfs

[b54red]

Since this was one of or possibly the hottest summer I have experienced in 45 years of growing tomatoes it really was a test of which tomato varieties could handle the heat best. The one thing that separated this summer from most others was the low humidity we had for the whole second half of the summer until two weeks ago. Hardly a week went by from mid May til early October that we didn't get a few days to top out at or above 100. We had only a few days with temps below 90 during a drought stricken 5 months. The past few weeks were the only time it felt like fall this season and it looks like that could end early with 37 forecast for tonight and 40 the two following nights.

First I will tell you which of my varieties that made it into mid October still produced some or mostly larger fruits. Number one was definitely Kentucky Wonder RL which was still producing tomatoes near a pound til I pulled it a week ago. It was followed closely by a real surprise because I never thought Giant Belgium would handle the heat so well and keep producing large fruit right til the end. The other two that were still producing some large fruit through this past week were 1884 and Arkansas Traveler. Limbaugh's Legacy, Neves Azorean Red, Gary O' Sena and Brandywine Cowlick's all made good numbers of medium to medium/large fruits through the worst of the heat but made some large ones before the worst of the drought took affect.

For sheer numbers nothing touches Indian Stripe PL followed closely by Spudakee, Pruden's Purple, JD's Special C Tex and Delicious through the worst of the heat. None of these four produced anything larger than a medium tomato from August til now.

I am sure if the humidity had been normal some others would have done better and some of the ones that did outstanding this year might not have fared so well. This year all my black varieties made smaller than normal fruit and I think it was due to the dry weather although it sure didn't stop them from putting on a heavy fruit set. All the plants still standing are infected with TYLCV but it hasn't stopped most of them from finishing growing and most have been ripening ok for this time of the year; but I think I will try pulling any fruit with a slight blush and taking them inside before the cold hits tonight. There aren't many fruits left on the vines now because not many new ones have set since the TYLCV hit five or six weeks ago so as soon as I can I will start pulling the last of them up.

Bill