Thank you all for your excellent advice. Since I was late starting, I will keep waiting…and I see two or three lower down that ARE turning red.
We’ve had a weird warm snap for the last couple of weeks – not enough to call a heat wave, but temps in the mid to upper eighties. It’s cooling down at the end of the week, so I hope the weather will facilitate ripening.
I’ll yank off the last of the flowers, although it goes against me Tomato Greed instinct – and I’ll bring the greenies inside by mid-October.
You need to top them by cutting off the growing tips of the stems. This forces plant resources into ripening, not more growing. You can also pinch off all flowers remaining. Here is a pruning guide.
I’ve got the same issues in Coastal North Carolina. By early summer it’s too hot for tomatoes. I get my plants in and the fruit picked early, or not at all.
I plant my tomatoes outside, each plant gets a tablespoon of Osmocote time release fertilizer, a tablespoon of super phosphate (a calcium triphosphate to insure there’s enough calcium to prevent blossom end rot) and a tablespoon of water absorbing crystals (to insure the plant has water at its roots to also prevent fruit damage) I never get fruit damage described above, and I’ve seen the tomatoes with holes sold at the farmers markets.
The plants on the side of the house began to get spotty leaves, that improved when I watered with Miracle-Gro (I usually stop using that once the plant is established.) This suggests to me the area may have poor soil. I will try to augment it this fall.
To echo puly - everyone I’ve talked with here in the W burbs of Chicago has had tons of tomatoes this year - including me. Mine seem to vary year by year. With all apologies to Cornell U, my impression is that this recent string of hot weather has ripened up fruit that would have otherwise stayed green.
I’m no expert grower, but my thoughts are:
Above all else, get the right location. Tomatoes need sun. Mine grow next to a south facing wall.
Mulch, and don’t till. Heck, just dump your grass clippings where you intend to plant your veggies to keep down weeds.
Water copiously.
Trim non-productive vegetation. Going into September I cut off just about everything other than fruit-bearing stems. Including flowers. If they haven’t set fruit by now, they aren’t going to ripen.
Plant different varieties. If only 2 plants, maybe one for slicing, and one of cherries. If one doesn’t do well, the other might. And they will likely produce on different schedules.
In any event, keep at it. What did it cost you - a couple of bucks? Better luck next year!
While this is absolutely true, I’m actually quite surprised at how well they do pretty much anywhere, as long as they get several hours of sun. At my new place, the garden is situated such that it directly abuts the west side of the garage. This means the tomatoes don’t get full sun until about 12:30 p.m., when the sun is south and just west enough of the garage to be in direct sunlight. Then, the direct light lasts until maybe 6 p.m. before the shadow of the house is cast on the garden. I was somewhat surprised that they did as well as they did, but then I realized my mother has a similar situation, with her tomato bed directly east of the house, so tomatoes only get direct sunshine until about 12:30 p.m. (So maybe 6:30/7 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.) And she had a bumper crop this year, too.
Like I said, EVERYONE I’ve talked with this year has had a bumper crop. So maybe I could have even planted them among the hostas! I’m mildly surprised that your mom did well with the a.m. sun. IME 6 hrs in the morning is not equal to 6 hrs in the p.m. I would have assumed tomatoes would have preferred baking in the p.m. blaze/heat. But I have enough to think about trying to figure out my own microclimates.
Again, thanks to everyone. I’m not used to getting this many responses to threads I start.
But, having grown up in Northeast Ohio, I should have known how enthusiastic and analytical tomato growers are. It was a regular summer conversational topic among the adults. “Plant by the light of the full moon, and bury a black cat bone at the head of each row!”
I was surprised, too, but she has been doing it that way since … let’s see … 2004 at their new house. And she packs 'em in, too! None of this 2 feet per plant spacing. It’s a foot between seedlings. None of it should work, yet somehow it does.
You need to plant the variety that will do well in your area. I’m in NW Oregon and the cold Pacific Ocean is about 12 miles away, just over that hill there. The average last day of frost is May 15. But I don’t push it by getting plants in that early because it stays wet and cold. It rained through most of May and June. I think I planted mid-June.
Tomatoes want full sun and a warming soil. Planting early in cold soil will just stunt the plants. You will actually do better by waiting until the soil temperature warms close to 60 degrees F and plant in the fullest sun you have on your lot. The best plants you can buy, never seeds unless you have a greenhouse. Know that the plants you buy at your local garden store were not raised in your area but trucked in. Mid-May, big great plants on sale and once you plant them they don’t grow. Because the store is selling to the people who want to get them in early.
Early is good for peas, warmth is better for tomatoes.
If you have a place near a building that can reflect some of the light and heat on the plants, that is a good spot to put them in too. If you live in a marginal climate for tomatoes, as I do, give them as much light and warmth as you can.
And the right variety. Early Girl is a good one for beef steak types. And Cherry 100 for the small ones. I am eating Early Girl baseball size every day, and have a dozen or more on the window sill just waiting. And more cherrys than I can eat. Great tomato year.
But I have had many, many green tomato years, even after doing everything the same. Weather can’t be controlled, so you do what will work if the weather cooperates you will have a good year.
Tomato performance (and taste) can vary quite a bit year to year.
As long as there’s full sun (or nearly so), a long enough growing season (with the tomato variety tailored to it) and not excessive fertilization (favoring green growth at the expense of fruit), there should be plenty of ripe tomatoes. Ordinary northeastern or midwestern summer heat waves shouldn’t interfere with tomato ripening.
Cropping has generally been quite good here in central Ohio; taste varies depending on environmental conditions. Success is much greater than when I was growing up in NYC and the only space available for a couple of tomato plants was in a narrow backyard space between our house and that of the neighbors, which got at best 2 hours of sun a day. I was lucky to get three or four modest-sized tomatoes per season.
And yeah, even fairly small tomatoes will ripen indoors after picking eventually.
I don’t remember WHAT the variety I planted. I bought the four seedlings at a discount hardware store; should have gotten Better Boy or some other classic but I chose the ones with the prettiest picture. Clearly not well thought out.
Anyway, I’ve topped and deflowered and we shall see. I already have enough fruit that it was much cheaper to buy these plants than to buy tomatoes at the farmers’ market.
I got exactly two ripe tomatoes out of 4 plants that grew from late May until now. They were barely golf ball sized but they were good. You could almost make a sandwich out of them. I still have a few small green ones that have a little hope but not much. I think I am much worse than you are.
To be fair, I have a back patio in Massachusetts that is shaded most of the time and I just bought a bunch of different things to try to figure out what will grow there. The answer is not much except for a fern that loves it and looks like it should be in a botanical garden now. Everything else sort of lived but was on life support for the entire summer. I guess I will be growing a glorious fern garden next year.
Pbbbbbbttttt!!! Amateurs. I once put a tomato seedling in a container on my deck, with dreams of leisurely strolling out every other day and plucking a juicy red tomato for my salad. The thing got some kind of hideous virus and turned brown and dried up. But with three small bright red tomatoes still on the dead plant. It creeped me out, and i got rid of the whole mess and never tried again, to tell the truth. We are swimming in tomatoes everywhere here, really cheap.
Out back behind my first post-college apartment. Definitely not enough sunlight, but it grew a single, beautiful tomato.
“Ah!” says I, one fine Sunday afternoon. “Behold the lovely tomato. It has, in the fullness of time, become ripe and delicious. I shall pluck it from yon vine on my way to work tomorrow morning and it will be my breakfast.”
So the next morning, I open the back door. The tomato is not on the plant.
I look around.
About five feet away, a squirrel is sitting on a tree stump, holding my tomato.
He looks at me.
I look at him.
Maintaining eye contact with me, he takes a single bite from my tomato. Then he saunters away, leaving it to bleed out on the stump.
I’m mildly surprised that your mom did well with the a.m. sun. IME 6 hrs in the morning is not equal to 6 hrs in the p.m. I would have assumed tomatoes would have preferred baking in the p.m. blaze/heat. But I have enough to think about trying to figure out my own microclimates.