I was at Baker's last week talking to the sales person about shade cloth and she said around May.

I agree with Mary. My trellises are built and the frame for the shade cloth is up. However no shade cloth will go up until May when day time temps are in the low to mid 90's. Of course if it suddenly gets really hot in April it may go up early.

Thanks for your help! I have my frames & shade cloth ready to go.

I have fond memories of the tomato garden I had in the south yard. There were 72 plants crowded together with NO shade. I never had so many tomatoes! These days, I'm looking for eastern exposures that have afternoon shade, spots under trees and under shade cloth. Those on the eastern side are in the ground; the rest are in pots so I can move 'em.

Pamperedchef, which plants are you growing? If you've grown them before, which ones produced best?

Tomatofreak, I have the following growing:

Bloody Butcher~fabulous flavor, first tomatoes to ripen
Isis Candy~very sweet, I think it was a slow grower for a small tomato
White Queen~Very tasty, good producer
Cherokee Purple~what can I say, a great tomato, early
Thessaloniki~no ripe fruit yet
Chocolate Cherry~yummy, I thought it was very slow for a cherry
Green Zebra~love the tart flavor, good producer
Costoluto Genovese~slow grower, unimpressive flavor
Red Zebra~pretty, flavor okay, only variety to get a couple fruits with BER
Cow's Tit~unusual name, unusual shape, no fruit ripe yet
Purple Russian~delicious flavor, early producer
Black & Red Boar~good flavor, sets up lots of fruit
Crimson~very tasty, early producer
Mrs. Houseworth~YUM! produced lots of blossoms, but took FOREVER to set into fruit
Woodle Orange~pretty fruit, plant died suddenly

Most of the plants I started from seed last August and kept them through the winter. My plan is to keep them going until they can't take the heat. I'll then start some more varieties from seed. I participated in a Seed Swap last year and rec'd seeds from about 70 different varieties, so I have a lot to work through!

Wow! I've only heard of a few of those. I should do more with seeds, I think. I love purple Cherokee, but I had very little luck with it. Another recommended tomato was Mortgage Lifter, but I think I got two tomatoes off that plant. This year, I'm trying different tomatoes in as many different settings as I can find. Wish me luck.

I did shade last year when it started hitting about 100 degrees. I used old bedsheets and extended my t-posts with some 1inch PVC. I'll do the same this year.
I have 21 tomatoes in the garden. Also have two dwarfs, Lime Green Salads, in a barrel.

I can't get the plants to set fruit when it gets warm.
Suggestions?

Ernie, you need to get those plants in the ground before its too warm. If they start trying to flower when it's too hot you've missed the opportunity and it's all over.
We have two tomato seasons here. The best is early spring. The other is fall. If you miss early spring, pull the plants up. Replant in September. My experience is its not worth trying to keep them alive all summer. They aren't as strong as new plants in the fall.

I lost some plants do to disease last summer but those that lived produced all summer until frost. There were less fruit being produced during the hottest part of summer but production never stopped.

My plants were big and all grown on large trellises under 60 percent shade cloth which created a small micro climate. To help with pollination. Every morning I would go out and shake the trellis just before sunrise when temps were at their coolest.

This years tomato grow list....

Tried and true...
Juliet
Sungold

Going to trial...
Sweet Million
Federle
Thessaloniki
Jaune Flamme
Indigo Rose
Speckled Roman
Big Beef

Purple Tomatillo

When do you put yours in the ground?

I started planting early February.

About how high did you place your 60% shade cloth?

About how high did you place your 60% shade cloth?

This image may help. The bed is 4'x6', the 3/4" pvc tubing is 10' long and pushed into the soil on either side of the bed. It's maybe 3' at the center. I will put 50% shade cloth over this when needed. Hope this helps.

{{!gwi}}

I removed the mosquito netting to aid pollination. It will be a bird deterrent later.

This pic is a San Marzano and a Black Cherry tomato. Picture was taken Feb 24. I germinated seeds Jan 1st and planted around March 1st. We kept having heat spells followed by cold spells through Feb and that caused me to vaccilate about in-ground planting. All my tom plants are setting fruit now.

{{!gwi}}

I never use shading. I know a lot of people will disagree with me but I've had great success without it.

Thanks! That does help. Nice looking plants.

i don't shade mine either, i just let them ride out the summer and they'll start fruiting again in the fall seems to work ok for me. although my garden is in against an east facing wall so it gets shade in the afternoons ant they're in the ground not in pots

I may try not shading one bed and see what the difference is. hellbound and toad, are you both in Phx proper?

Here's that Black Cherry tomato today. I planted it in the 24" box a mesquite tree came in. It's a monster, the picture does not do it justice.

{{!gwi}}

The beds today:

{{!gwi}}

San Marzano's (2)

{{!gwi}}

Yes, I am in Phoenix. I also plant mine in the ground but in the south yard and pull my plants early in July. If I can figure out how to post pictures I will.
Nice plants and beds marymcp.

Thanks toad. Posting pictures on GW *is* a bit of a challenge compared to some other sites. You need to have the pictures stored on-line, I use Shutterfly. Open the picture in Shutterfly (for example), right click, go to Properties and capture the http:// and paste it into this string where is says "PASTE HERE". Keep the double quotes in place but be sure to remove the http:

Hope this helps.

Use this: [img src=""] except that the [ ]s need to be replaced with and your image location, goes inside of the " "s. It's really very simple. And remove the http:

[img src="PASTE HERE"]

If I leave the signs in, it won't post due to html coding so just replace those brackets with greater than/less than signs and your image address replaces PASTE HERE.

My shade cloth was at a height of 7' 9". The tomatoes completely filled and overflowed the trellis and the shade cloth last year in that 14' X 4' 6" raised bed. I like trellises. I also like to grow things that shade other things. This year I'm doing things a lot differently. Yes that means more trellises and more shade cloth.

I only have pictures from the early part of last season because of health issues. Even so you can get an idea of what it looked like by checking out my PHOTOBUCKET Album.

{{gwi:48119}}

{{gwi:398502}}

Here is a link that might be useful: THISISME's PHOTOBUCKET Album

Wow, I love that big fat trellis!!

Thisisme, I have to admit, that is not the typical AZ landscaping and I totally dig it! No pun intended! Lol! You are definitely handy and have a green thumb. Everything looks organized and full of life! Nice job!

Thanks for the props. I really enjoy the garden. Each year it gets a little better. For me this year is the year of the Flea Beetle. It will be time to spray again soon. I've been eating squashed picked from my garden for over a week now. But today when checking on my raised beds I found a leek. Got to love our long growing season.

The beautiful hand and arm in this picture belong to my wife.

{{gwi:398505}}

Wow, that is a gorgeous leek! I'd love to know what you're going to cook with it. :)

Its going into a Creamy Leek and Potato Soup. Were going to triple the recipe though so I will probably have to go out and pick one more. I only have 30-40 left from last Octobers planting. At this point nearly all of them are really big.

That one is not the biggest. It was just the first one I attempted to pick. I pulled and pulled and it would not come up without a bit of digging. I was so impressed I washed it off and came in to show my wife. She insisted I take a picture of it to send to our oldest who is currently deployed in the Persian Gulf. Once the picture was taken I decided to share it here.

Yes you can grow big Leeks in Arizona in full sun against a south facing wall. If you plant at the right time of year.

That is absolutely beautiful. I may have to try leeks again. Did you plant starts or seeds? I planted seeds one fall, and they sprouted fine, but the leeks never grew much. They were in the ground for a couple of years (kept disappearing and reappearing), but never got any bigger than chives, really. My problem is, my yard is so small, and surrounded by trees, that I don't really have a "full sun" section of it anywhere :( I manage to grow just enough to convince me to keep trying!

Wow! Tomatoes **and** leeks? I have modest (very) success with tomatoes, but never with leeks. However, there's nothing growing on the south side of the house, so.... what is the "right time to plant"?

OK, now I'm starting to feel a little bad for hijacking az_pamperedchef's thread.

It's not a perfect story.

I started the leeks from seed. I screwed up by direct planting them in the Spring in another bed that did not get much sun. They were totally shaded by tomato and yardlong beans. After the tomatoes and beans die off in the winter that bed gets very little sun during the winter. So in October when they were still fairly small at only 3"-6" tall I transplanted them into a bed against a south facing wall that gets full day sun all year round.

October is the month listed in the Arizona specific planting calenders to plant leek seeds. I guess transplants work just as well. I'm very happy with the results. I should add that I used some time released fertilizer at the time of transplant. I know some people say alums don't need fertilizers because they are nitrogen fixing plants. However I have read time and time again that they need fertilizer at the time of planting and for the first few months until they are well established. I have found that advice to be true as they grow and establish much faster when fertilized with no negatives I can think of.

i'm actually in goodyear a little hotter then phx in the summer and a little cooler in the winter but not more then a few degrees i love to trellis too i only have a 22 x 5 backyard garden i grown my tomatoes in but they are on the north west corner of my yard so the do get a little afternoon shade..... i have the entire garden trellied 4 inches from the wall i only had 2 plant survive the summer and winter so they're over a year old and massive and my peppers are 3 years old btw obout the leaks i had a simalar mishap with red onions 2 years ago planted seeds in spring around my okra got no sun didn't do anything after i yanked the okra in fall had small starts long story short it took a year and a half to get about 50 onions...

LOL @ Thisisme! No worries about the hijacking, I enjoy reading everyone's post. After I've gotten my answer of course! Thanks for sharing.

thisisme, you have some garden! A dedicated vegetable grower!
How did you eliminate all the bermuda?

"How did you eliminate all the bermuda?"

We are the first and only owners of our home and we never planted any grass in the backyard. Unfortunately a lot of bermuda grass seed blows into our yard from the neighbors. We use a Weed Burner in the open spaces and pull any that pops up in a raised bed.

When I removed the mulch this year from the beds in preparation for planting. My back went out before I could plant. For days I could not even get out of bed unassisted. I was not able to do anything in the garden for nearly three weeks. In that time it got real windy and then rained.

Aaaahhhh!!! Bermuda grass is popping up in my beds along with my vegetables. The seeds are coming up so thick you would think we had seeded it with bermuda grass. I put down 2-4 inches of mulch so weeding in the beds is not usually much of a problem. As a result this has not happened to me before and I am not looking forward to it.

Given my very bad back I broke down today and ordered some new long handled tools that are made for working in tight spaces. Anything to make weeding easier for me. I'm an Amazon Prime member so they should be here in a day or two. Gotta love that free two day shipping.