Larry,
A few of my opinions and experiences. First about the only pruning I do is at planting so I can bury a plant. And then later on if I have a low branch or two that my mulching will cover up I remove them. Otherwise I leave them alone. Each variety has it's own foliage habit and also your soil, weather conditions and how your plants were started will have some effect on the amount of foliage. I can show you two plants of the same variety that have different amounts of foliage. The reason I leave all foliage is my weather conditions and climate. Even with all of their original foliage some varieties don't have enough and I'll have some sun burn on the fruit. A classic example of what less foliage can cause I experienced recently. I have two plants that I started early and have potted up a few times. I moved them in and out of the lean to for a while and then left them on the east side of my utility room. I was slow potting them up to larger pots at times. The plants haven't grown the foliage they should have but have set fruit well and have grown fairly tall. They had full sun till around 1. I decided two weeks ago to move them where they would have a good windbreak but full sun all day. The sun didn't effect the plants at all. They were hardened and able to make the adjustment to the full sun. In fact the plants are looking better. But around 50% of fruit on one plant and a little less on the other suffered sunburn/sunscald. There just isn't enough foliage on the plant to shade the fruit. I can either add shade which partially defeats my purpose in moving them or move them back. As I don't see these plants developing enough additional foliage to help. My intention was to only keep them alive till the other plants started producing well. So may just get the good fruit left from them and add them to the mulch pile. So to answer your question Larry I have never felt I had too much foliage. The lack of concerns me. Larry when I say I've never seen too much I'm assuming the soil is balanced and the plants haven't been overfed on nitrogen. If a plant is dark green, fairly lush and setting fruit well too much foliage is beauty to my eye. You may get other opinions. I respect each. I base mine on my experience under my conditions. And I feel my conditions are as harsh as most. And remember I have low humidity here. I might worry more about heavy foliage if I had humidity issues which can cause an increase in foliage diseases. Jay

Like Jay, I prune off lower stems so I can plant deep. I also remove any damaged or diseased foliage at the bottom of the plant which may be the result of soil splash or just normal aging of the plant, otherwise I leave everything.

I planted 26 different tomatoes this year and everything in the garden got the same treatment as a seedling and at planting. Some are huge and full and some don't have nearly enough foliage to please me.

I try to tuck all the branches inside the cage, but I always miss some that sneak past me and grow their own way. Hopefully they will get enough support from the cage so they don't break off.

All of my in-ground tomatoes have a CRW cage except for one dwarf. My container plants are two different ways. Six of them are growing on a jute cord that supports them from the top and every few days I twist the cord around the top of the plant. The others are in cheap big box store tomato cages that I normally just use for peppers. My thinking was that the plants in containers wouldn't get as big and this might be enough support. I may have been wrong on some of them, but so far so good.

This year for the first time I've been very aggressive pruning my indeterminate tomatoes. I've cut out all suckers and many of the lower branches to improve air circulation. I've left enough leaves on top to shade the fruit and provide the plant energy. I've been very happy with the results, with a bumper crop -- one plant has 17 full-size tomatoes on it!

When I've left them go unpruned in the past, I didn't get near the crop. Of course, we've had a long, relatively mild spring and I got these in early. We've already harvested a few, and that's a good month ahead of normal.

Larry, I plant much the same way that Jay and Carol described and do not prune except to remove lower branches for deeper transplanting, or to remove low foliage that is either diseased or aging as the season goes on. I just let all of each row grow together in one long, thick tomato hedge.

I hesitate to prune off foliage at all because, as Jay and Carol both noted, some varieties often don't even produce heavy enough foliage to prevent sunscald.

The two long beds of tomatoes that went into the ground earliest (March 12th-13th) are huge monsters and have grown together into a jungle, and the double row beside them that went in about 10 days later is almost as bad. I have had to prune off some of their limbs that came out into the pathways and made it impossible to use the pathways without either being slapped in the face by tomato plant branches or without breaking them. I didn't like doing it, but when Tim came into the garden looking for me and couldn't find me because the pathways had disappeared, I knew I had to prune back a few limbs to open up the pathways.

The paste tomatoes that went into the ground near the end of March or earliest April are just now getting that thick so I haven't pruned them any yet. The later plants that went into the ground from mid- to late-April as replacements for some cool-season crops aren't that thick yet, and may not even get that thick since rainfall has been scarce since they were planted. Yet, they are producing almost as heavily as the plants that have much more foliage. However, their fruits may suffer from sunscald. I try to watch for sunscald and nip it in the bud by using clothespins to attach shade cloth or even sheets of newspaper to shade fruit if it is too exposed to the sun,.

Like Jay, I find it hard to ever say a plant has too much foliage as long as it is producing fruit well. Since I am pretty careful to avoid overfeeding with nitrogen, I don't normally have that "all foliage, no fruit" issue. However, when the foliage is thick and heavy and we have heavy rainfall and high humidity, foliage disease is common here. That will force me into pruning since I normally do not spray my plants with fungicides. Every year I say to myself "This year I am going to spray with fungicides the minute the plants go into the ground" and every year I don't do it. Right now I have two rows of plants where some of the plants have some foliar issues, but others don't, and I need to prune off some diseased foliage. Since I don't intend to irrigate heavily, if at all, after July 1st if no rain is falling, disease doesn't worry me. The lack of rain likely will take out the plants before disease will.

If you have constant high humidity and/or high moisture and see foliage diseases beginning, then I'd think it would help to prune off some of that heavy foliage, if needed, to allow good air flow, or to spray with fungicide now to prevent diseases from attaching to the foliage. You have to do whatever works for you. I keep the lower foliage pruned off beginning about June, but that's because it either is yellowing from age, a lack of sunlight because of thicker foliage above, or some sort of disease.

Because of heavy rainfall in March and parts of April, my plant foliage was so heavy that you couldn't even tell the plants had fruit there for a while. Now, as the tomatoes break color, you start seeing all those flashes of color in the heavy foliage. Do whatever suits you and what makes it easier to manage your plants. I go by instinct. Usually by mid-June I'll have removed at least the bottom foot of foliage from every plant, partly because it is yellowing, and partly to make it easier to watch for snakes as I mulch and harvest. Foliage that is too thick down low to the ground makes me nervous. I'm seeing an average of a snake a day in the garden, and you know I hate snakes. For a long time it was only small, non-venomous ones but now I am starting to see venomous ones, so I am extra jumpy and don't like to stick my hand into heavy foliage to harvest if I cannot see that the foliage doesn't have any snakes hiding in it. Sometimes when I have to harvest a lot of fruit off one plant and it has heavy, heavy foliage partially obscuring the fruit, I'll remove a limb or two in that area just to ensure a rattlesnake or copperhead doesn't bite me while I am harvesting. That would kind of ruin my day and I'd like to avoid it.

Remember that heavy tomato foliage is and can be a two-edged sword. On the one hand, every leaf conducts photosynthesis so the leaves are the tomato factory that produce fruit, so to speak. In that sense, heavy foliage is good. Normally on my plants, more foliage = more tomatoes as long as I haven't overfed them with nitrogen. But, on the other hand, thick and dense foliage can hide pests of all kinds including, in my garden, bobcats and snakes, so I have to be extra cautious in the garden if the foliage is too thick. It also can lead to poor air flow and make it easier for diseases to spread.

You're a really good gardener, Larry, so trust your instincts and do what feels right to you. If your gut feeling says "I don't know what feels right", then you could try pruning on one or two and see if you thinks it helps keep them healthier, makes them more productive or, conversely, less productive, etc. Then, use that experience to guide you in deciding what to do with the rest of your plants.

In a perfect world, I'd never prune a tomato plant, but in my snake-plaugued garden and with diseases that start running rampant in heavy foliage by late June, I often prune more than I'd like as the season goes on.

Sometimes, pruning doesn't really help. Sometimes I prune off lower limbs for ease of access for mulching or for better visability or because the lower limbs are discolored and looking sickly, and the plant promptly puts out new suckers in that same place within a few days to replace them. So, I try to let the plant do what it wants most of the time because it knows what it needs better than I do.

The important thing is to get tomatoes, so I don't worry and fret too much over the foliage as long as the plant is making tomatoes. My plants look to me like that have twice as much foliage as any other tomato plant I've seen in our county this year. Maybe it is because I planted before everyone else. Maybe it is that the soil is well-amended and highly fertile. Whatever the reason, there's lot of foliage on my plants and I like that. I have high fruitset too, so it isn't because they're overfed with nitrogen. They're just happy plants. I'm inclined to think it is the same thing with your plants. Happy, healthy tomato plants can turn into monsters pretty quickly, but I always grow a few types of tomatoes that naturally do not produce nearly as much foliage as the other ones do. I think to some extent the amount of foliage a given variety has may be genetically-related.

Dawn

Larry, when branches escape through the CRW cages and get too long before I get them tucked back in, especially if there are at least four still inside the cage, I will tip prune those escapees, leaving any flower buds and setting fruit and just taking out the growing tip. That way I don't sacrifice the fruit on those branches but do stop them from continuing to grow and breaking down into the path ways. Other than that I don't prune much except at planting time and as Dawn does to be able to see the ground under the plants.

I don't know what is going on with mine this year, as I have fat ones, thin ones, tall ones, and a few short ones. I have one that is wide open in the center and has three branches that are stretched as far as they can go against the sides of the cage with 3 tomatoes in the middle of the plant just asking for sunscald. Others are lush. I have a Tess that has struggled since it went in the ground and another in a container that is doing fine. I have been afraid that the vines that always grow in my fence were giving it too much shade although I have cut them 3 times. A few plants down from it and growing under the same conditions is one of the biggest plants in the garden.

I have a little grass and a few weeds in my garden but the biggest problem that I have growing is junk that grows in the fence line. I just can't get rid of it.

All things considered, the tomato plants look pretty good and I think I should get a lot of fruit unless we have a really weird weather issue.

Jdlaugh, Mine will end up aggressively pruned down low on the plant like yours are now, but not until they've already gotten pretty large and have great fruit set. Most all of my determinates are 6 to 8' tall now, so I wouldn't think they'd get a whole lot taller, cause they're coming out of the tops of their cages and growing back down to the ground. My most productive indeterminates so far are the ones that I didn't prune at all until their fruit began to ripen and I needed to be able to see it to harvest it. I pruned up all the foliage in about the lowest foot of each plant within the last couple of weeks, picked off all the ripe and nearly ripe fruit, and then put down a thicker layer of mulch on top of the already existing mulch. The areas I pruned last week already are putting out new growth and I am not inclined to reprune it unless I start seeing foliage diseases.

From those plants....and they are varieties like Early Girl, Red Beefsteak, Better Boy, Big Boy, Goliath, Fourth of July, Early Goliath, and Cluster Goliath, I've harvested as many as 50 fruit per plant on the ones like Early Girl and Fourth of July that have smaller fruit and maybe 10 to 15 per plant so far from the ones like Big Boy and Red Beefsteak that make very large fruit. This is more fruit than I usually would have harvested so early in the season, but I planted most of them a month earlier than usual, and then the weather cooperated by staying warm or, at times, ridiculously hot.

Carol, I have had some plants act a lot like yours, especially when they were younger and smaller in March and April. They kept spreading out and sprawling all over the cage. I kinda think maybe the wind was pushing them around a lot. They did the same thing as some of yours, with all the limbs flatteded up against the edges of the cage and all the fruit in the middle just begging for sunscald. I finally moved the limbs around to shade them more, and used surveyor's tape to tie the branches to the cages where I wanted them so they fruit wouldn't sunscald. I had to do a lot of rearranging and tying of branches, but haven't lost a single tomato to sunscald. Now that a few more weeks have passed the plants have filled in and the foliage is so lush you cannot even see fruit until I prune off the lower foliage, which I've been doing today while harvesting.

I kinda lost control of the tomato planting process when I had to spend that week at Lake Murray when we were doing all the fire training exercises right when I was in the middle of planting. It was a windy week, and the plants that had been in the ground a couple of weeks prior to that were flailing around inside the cages with no guidance. By the time I got all the rest of the plants into the ground in the following 3 or 4 weeks, I had plants growing sideways, ziggy-zaggy, and every which way but loose. It was hard to try to correct their bad habits by then but now that they've filled in, you cannot tell they were all over the place in their early weeks.

Today, as I pick tomatoes, I'm pruning off low foliage, diseased foliage, tip-pruning the foliage growing out into the pathways, and pruning off any foliage I inadvertently break while harvesting. The plants do look a lot happier since it rained, so instead of having a hot, dry, drought-stressed jungle of tomatoes, I have a humid, happier jungle of tomatoes that needs a little pruning just to rein in the rampant growth. The rain was desperately needed and fell at the right time.

I had worried about BER being an issue with all the paste tomatoes, but so far have only found 1 tomato today with BER and it was on a Big Boy plant that had about 40 tomatoes on it, most of them in various stages of ripening. I picked everything at the breaker stage or riper, pulled the BER one which was a small one and tossed it, and pruned off the lower foliage. Since rain fell, I don't think there will be any more BER on that plant. I think that little tomato with BER had the misfortune to be trying to grow on a heat-stressed, drought-stressed plant that already had a big load of fruit on it. If one BER tomato is all I have to deal with after a horrifically dry and hot May, I'll be a happy camper indeed.

The stuff that is in the fenceline, is it on your neighbor's property? Cause if it was on my property, I'd be tempted to cut it back and paint the regrowth with a nice strong brush-killing herbicide. That's what I do when poison ivy and greenbrier tries to take over the northwest corner of the garden by creeping through the fence.

I do think that plants getting too much shade are less likely to put on lots and lots of foliage, but not in every case. We have had a lot of foliage on the toms growing in the shade of the pecan tree, although maybe not quite as much foliage as those in full sun from sunrise to sunset.

During all the rainfall this week, I moved all my container toms up under the patio cover, so that they are getting only about 4 hours of morning sun and then afternoon shade. I need to move them back out into the yard where they'll have more sun, but they are so happy under that patio cover that I hate to do it. There is not a single icky looking leaf among those plants, and no spider mites either. I'd leave them there, but I don't think they'd produce fruit with only 4 hours a day of direct sunlight.

Dawn

Dawn, The fence is all mine, so that isn't the problem. We have dug, pulled, burned, and put round-up on it, and that doesn't do it. What kind of brush killer should I buy?

The 2 neighbors that are behind me had this awful stuff growing on the fence between them and one of them got hold of some type of strong herbicide and sprayed his fence. They haven't taken out the brush yet, but it appears to have killed their vines. Of course, just killing the leaves and branches doesn't necessarily mean that they got a good kill. I'll ask him what he used next time I see him out.

I'll have to move a few things but I would be happy to do that this fall if I could get rid of the stuff. Some of it looks like a briar, but no thorns. It twists and twins worse than a bean plant. I have only left it growing one time and it had clusters of red berries on it, but nothing ate them. One day I found a cardinal dead at the bottom of the vine and wondered if the vine had killed it.

I have lots of Virginia Creeper. I cut and pull it everywhere except from one area on the north fence. I have stumps of small walnut trees in the fenceline also and no matter how many times I saw them off, they still branch out every year.

Thanks everyone,

My "Gut feeling", is, I should have pruned more at planting time. I should be pruning diseased limbs now.

I amended pretty heavily this year and sprayed with blue water once, the blue water should have stayed in the container, I dont think I needed it.

The first picture of the three Mountain Fresh shows they are too short, fat and bushy, maybe they should have been in a container with a cage. There is pretty good fruit set on all except the Big Daddy, it looks good and has blooms and some fruit, but it is slooow and lazy.

The fruit seems smaller this year, maybe because of too much Nitrogen and less water.( I have only harvested five tomatoes this year)

I will do some trimming, maybe on the north side so I can look in and find the fruit.

Larry

Larry the plants look great to me. They have the kind of foliage I need here to prevent sun burn. JD's plants look great also. But I'm afraid they might sunburn here in my conditions. I feel the wind along with the heat plays a factor into why I experience sunburn unless I have heavy foliage. Your fruti set in the picture looks good. It is too early here to determine any leaders ect. Early Doll has set decently so far. My first year for it. Have one blue variety setting fruit. So hoping to try some of them this year and save some seed. Jay

Larry, they look gorgeous. Are you just fishing for a complement???? LOL By the way, I don't think they need more blue water.

Jay, I am trying Early Doll for the first time also, and the vines are looking really good. I was looking at one of the plants today that has outgrown all it's neighbors.

Other than cherries, I think my best fruit set is on a True Black Brandywine. This is my first time to grow it also. New Big Dwarf seems to be having the hardest time setting fruit. It has been covered with blooms but few have set fruit. My poorest looking container plants are still the Wild Boar Farms types.

Larry, if you have had five tomatoes, you are ahead of me. I have had 2 Matt's Wild Cherry, and 4 Sungold. Together that wouldn't equal one good slicer. I told Dawn today that I was talking to the bacon. It's just terrible what habits you pick up from fellow gardeners. HeeHee

Larry, they look wonderful! I ditto, Jay, Carol, Dawn and Dorothy. Over the years I've gotten less and less inclined to prune, unless a branch gets in the way. My favorite all round tomato is Baker Family Heirloom, which reaches a BUSHY 10'in length by the end of the season. I use 5' concrete reinforcing wire cages and prune only as necessary. My normal crop is excellent.

George

Carol,
My Early Doll's both have fruit set although not heavy yet. And they have been vigorous and looking good. Suzy's Grandma's and Randy's Brandy both from Gary are looking good again this year so far. The Wild Boar varieties have never done good here. I'm growing one this year. It is Solar Flare. So far looks good but haven't noticed any fruit set. That will be the telling factor. They are saying temps basically upper 80's with one day in the mid 90's over the next week. So hoping for some good fruit set during this time. I only had two grafted plants make it. One is passing everything now. It is planted next to it's non grafted mate that was actually slightly larger when I set them out. It is half again as big now. The stems on it are at least a 1/3 bigger if not 50% larger. It may have the most fruit set of anything. I will be keeping an eye on it. The other grafted plant is a Brandywine selection and doing fine but not standing out yet like the one is. I will wait another month to pick the leaders and those that are standing out. I released some lady bugs last night and will continue for a few days. Trying to build my beneficials back up. Their numbers really dropped during the drought. And the numbers of the bad boys have been high at times this year. Especially the aphids and thrips. Jay

Carol,

I am proud of my garden but I am not satisfied, I want it to be better next year. I owe most of what I know and have done to all you on this forum. I have gardened a little for many years, but never with the success I have now. Most of my gardens in the past would be more like going out and buying a six pack of tomatoes and pepper plants and planting them with little else.

George, that Bakers tomato sounds like one I would like to try. I did not start a lot of seeds this year. The theme this year has been dealing with Rootknot nematodes. I will have to wait to see if I made any progress.

Larry

Carol, I will preface this herbicide recommendation with a strong exhortation that you google and find the label for each product and read it thoroughly before choosing one. All brushkiller type products are extremely strong and extremely persistent in the environment. They also usually (perhaps always, but I'm not positive about that) contain at least one of the herbicides known to persist in plant matter, compost, manure and hay/straw, so plant material from anything you spray with them should be bagged and disposed of for the the next 4 or 5 years so you don't contaminate your own compost.

The kind of brush killer that kills (slowly but surely, in 1 to 6 weeks, and even then you may need to respray a second time) brushy weeds, vines and tree saplings would be something with an active ingredient like Tordon (which contains picloram, which I believe started the whole contaminated compost/manure issue over a decade ago) or Triclopyr. You'd look for something like Bayer Brush Killing Plus Concentrate or Roundup Brush Ivy Plus Tough Brush Killer.

If I was using any of these products near my garden, I'd probably use a foam paint brush while wearing chemically resistant gloves to apply them thoroughly to the foliage I wanted to kill. That's because I am very cautious about any herbicide use near my veggies, herbs and flowers....for obvious reasons...and would rather not spray because of drift.

If I was going to try to kill brush near a row of garden plants, I'd cover the garden plants near that fenceline with sheet plastic while using the product and wouldn't remove the plastic until after the spray on the nearby plants had dried.

Larry, Your plants look fine (in fact, they look beautiful), but I wouldn't give them any more nitrogen unless they begin to exhibit signs of nitrogen deficiency later in the season, which I think is unlikely to happen.

Mountain Fresh is a very strong, sturdy determinate that sets heavy loads of good-sized red fruit that has pretty good flavor for a hybrid. So, your Mountain Fresh plants are not going to get a whole lot larger than they already are. And, just an FYI, if you like Mountain Fresh tomatoes and want to continue growing them in future years, you might want to switch to Mountain Fresh Plus, which is pretty much identical except it has nematode tolerance/resistance bred into it. They're from the Mountain series of tomatoes bred by NC's Dr. Randy Gardner. Other great tomatoes from his Mountain line include Mountain Glory, Mountain Pride, Mountain Spring and Mountain Magic (a cherry type). I've grown all of them and like them. They have a great disease tolerance/resistance package and, for hybrid tomatoes, they have pretty good to great flavor.

Jay, My Early Doll is doing well too. It has not been early for me, but that's my fault for holding it in a plastic cup forever and forever and forever. I just didn't have a spot for it. I finally put it in a container and it is very happy there but no ripe fruit yet. I don't think I put it into the container until the last week in April though. Next year I'll try to plant it at the same time as Early Girl for a head-to-head comparison.

I'm only growing two WBF varieties this year--Michael Pollan and Brown and Black Boar. Both have a lot more fruit set than last year, but only Brown and Black Boar has ripened tomatoes so far. I picked maybe 12 or 15 ripe or almost-ripe fruit off Brown and Black Boar yesterday. I haven't tasted one yet, but their appearance is beautiful and I hope the flavor matches the appearance.

Indigo Rose has fruit and their color fascinates me, y'all. I've never seen anything like it.

Our beneficial insect population has been slow to rebound from the drought too, but I am seeing more of them every day. However, they still are not back to pre-drought levels and may not make it back to those levels this year.

Larry, My experience has been that the more you grow the more you will want to grow. When I lived in Fort Worth, had a tiny garden and worked full time, my garden was miniscule compared to what it is now. Even after we moved here and I had space and no longer worked at a job outside the home, I started with a small garden. Once I started raising more and more tomatoes and peppers from seed, I lost control and became a garden-enlarging plant maniac.

I believe all that heavy tomato foliage you have will give you a great harvest. My plants looked just as thick and dense as yours in late April and for most of May. Near the end of May, disease set in on the 6 oldest rows of tomato plants and now I am pruning a lot of diseased foliage out of those rows. However, I am harvesting a lot, so it all worked out well in the end. The rows of paste tomatoes (I think there's about 10 rows of 8 paste tomato plants in each row) are still dense with foliage and not much foliar disease yet, and the other 5 rows of tomato plants that went in around latest April are disease-free for the most part.

In my normally humid climate, disease is pretty much inevitable since I don't spray from Day 1 with a fungicide, but that doesn't stop me from getting a great crop. It just means I don't necessarily have beautiful plants after June begins. I like the heavy foliage and feel it contributes to high fruit set as long as it is normal heavy foliage and not nitrogen-overfed heavy foliage.

If I would behave myself and plant at proper spacing for good air flow and would spray with Daconil from Day 1, the May beauty likely would continue until the spide mite population reaches uncontrollable levels, which usually is in July but might be earlier this year since I started seeing heavy spider mite numbers in early April.

Dawn

Heavy foliage on healthy tomato plants that are not overfed nitrogen could give you a tomato harvest like my Saturday harvest.

It was 84 degrees or so when I started picking the tomatoes mid-day yesterday, and because I was removing diseased foliage, etc. as I went along, it took me forever. By the time I came inside just before dinner time, the high temp had peaked at 98 and dropped back to 97 degrees. It really was too hot to be outside all afternoon, but you've got to pick 'em when they're ready.

Chris stood on a ladder to take the photo so he could get the whole table in the shot.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful:

Dawn, that is a great harvest of beautiful tomatoes.

I only have 29 plants, if this is not a repeat of last year I will have more than I need. I put 12 plants in the north garden to see how well they do with the nematodes.

Larry

Larry, Thanks. I owe it all to the foliage that was so heavy that I really couldn't see the fruit until it began breaking color. Yesterday, in some cases, I had to prune back limbs to reach the fruit. My garden is an out-of-control jungle, but as the photo shows, an out-of-control jungle can produce a lot of yummy food.

It will be interesting to see how much the nematodes hurt your tomatoes. Didn't your nematodes likely come in on a purchased plant, or was that somebody else here that had that problem?

We have friends a couple of miles south of us that have sandy soil so heavily infested with nematodes that they've given up growing tomatoes. Nematodes are just a gardener's nightmare.

I always raise so many more tomatoes than we need even taking into account the fact that we preserve a lot. With a good harvest in June, I can get all the freezing, dehydrating and canning done before it gets too hot and then I don't care what the weather does to us after that. Well, I care, but it doesn't just crush all my hopes and dreams if drought kicks up and the fires start and keep me busy away from the garden. At least I can be happy with the ones we have now even if we don't have them all summer long. We're already having fires though not terribly bad ones yet so I need a good, big early harvest in June so I can coast for the rest of the summer.

Some of our gardening friends who can, dehydrate and freeze tomatoes (using any one or more of those techniques) plant over 200 tomato plants each year in order to ensure they have enough tomatoes for canning at one time. Then when they have canned all they want they call their friends and say if you want tomatoes, come and pick what you want 'cause we're done canning. I used to think I'd never get to the point that I didn't want to pick another tomato, but in a good year, I feel just like they do....that I am "done". However, I always keep a few plants going for fresh eating even after that.

Dawn

Dawn, I think the nematodes were on plants that were given to me and I scattered them with the tiller. Of course that is only a guess based on the plants I got from him were heavily infested and his garden became so heavily infested he has quit gardening. I think other factors were also involved in him not gardening any more.

This is the third place I have lived and had Rootknot nematodes but I dont expect them to stop me from gardening.
I think it is too early to see major nematode damage, but whatever I find, I will deal with it.

Larry

Larry will be interested how your tomatoes fare with the nematodes. If I ever get my healing chamber issues and hardening off techniques figured out on my grafting I will try sending you a few grafted plants to try. Some of the rootstock I use is supposed to be almost 100% resistant to them. There has been several trials done in NC and other places with very good results in fields they had quit growing them in.

Dawn Larry may of bought a plant with nematodes also but I did 2 years ago. At least that is where I think it came from. Only one plant that I had purchased had it. It was on an heirloom plant. Haven't studied nematodes enough as they usually don't cause problems this far north. At least haven't in the past. Knock on wood. But wonder if they could of been on the seed? Either that or it was evidently in the potting soil some how. As that is the only time I've seen it here and haven't had it again so far. Not a single plant last year showed any signs of it. Jay

I never really worried about nematodes coming in with the soil of living plants. It gives you something to think about. I do not think that nematodes would survive in my clay soil areas, but at the end of the garden with sandier soil they might.

Now that you mention it, Jay, I do remember when you found the nematode-infested plant. I wasn't extremely worried (of course, it wasn't my garden soil either, lol) about them sticking around up there because I think y'all get too cold for them. If the trend of warm winters continues, one never knows though. When I was a teenager, they thought fire ants couldn't progress much further than Dallas-Fort Worth, and now the fire ants are a lot further north than that. So are the armadilloes.

Grasshoppers are beginning to migrate into our yard and garden in pretty heavy numbers. I likely won't have to prune any more tomato plants no matter how dense the foliage might be as the grasshoppers will be doing a lot of pruning for me.

It's always something.

Oh Lord. Dawn has gotten into posting photos. Will any of us dare show ours again? :)

Just kidding, your harvest looks gorgeous!

I did gather a ton of greenies fallen from hail for a friend to make fried green cherry tomatoes. I knew I wouldn't have time to make them and didn't want them to go to waste. Went out tonight and pulled off any fruits that were hail pocked so the tomato wouldn't waste energy on it and threw them into compost pile.

Mia, Please note that Chris took the picture. LOL They are great looking tomatoes, aren't they? Can't wait for mine. I had 8 or 9 Matt's Wild Cherry which we shared. Even the little ones are great when that is all you have.

Lots of thunder tonight, but the rain has gone from NW to SE and is crossing into Arkansas just south of us. I think I will probably get a light shower in a few minutes.

Dawn,
What a bounty! Glad to see you posting pictures, I know you and Tim protect your privacy and identity but we would all love to see more pictures!
I finally harvested tomatoes in May, first ever and this year looks to be possibly my best tomato year ever!

Keith

Jay, thanks, I would love to try any kind of growing experiment.

Mia and Dawn, thanks for posting pictures. I am an "IDEA" thief and like to copy what others do that works for them, plus I just like to see gardening pictures.

Larry

Mia,

You can relax. Y'all are safe from further photos. When God passed out the photography gene and the technology gene, I was out playing in the garden and missed out on both.

As Carol noted, my adult son took the photos. He not only took them, but he also uploaded them (or whatever you call it) to his photobucket account. Then, he emailed them to me one by one so I could save them on my computer. Then he emailed me a document that said "How To Post Photos On Gardenweb". I thought it would be something that actually told me how to post photos, but it was just six URLs--two for each of the three photos. He said for me to try the first group and if they didn't work, then to use the second group. Well, the first group of URLs didn't work, but the second one did.

So, the extent of my involvement in the whole thing, other than lining up all the tomatoes on the little table and then putting them back into bowls to carry back into the kitchen afterwards, was to cut and past the photo URL into the box that says Optional Link URL. I have so much trouble doing anything on a computer that I was sure it wouldn't work, but it did.

Maybe one day I will master the art of taking and posting photos, but generally I don't even have the patience or the time to try to do it. When Chris tries to explain it to me verbally, his words go in one ear, scramble themselves up in my brain, and become virtually indecipherable. Then they fly out of my other ear and I do not remember one word he said. I think I have technology dyslexia. Remember in all the Charlie Brown/Peanuts television cartoons that when the adults speak, the kids hear something like "wank wank wank wank wank"? Well, that's what my brain hears when anyone tries to tell me how to do anything involving a computer, a smartphone (my phone is smarter than me), or a camera. I am the only person in the world who goes into a phone store and says "I want a phone that is just a phone. I don't want a phone that has a camera or internet service or anything else. I just want a telephone." When my last little Motorola Razor phone died about a year ago, my former daughter-in-law gave me her old smartphone and it is too smart for me but I guess I am stuck with it now. Tim and Chris keep telling me I am eligible for a phone upgrade and should get a newer, better smartphone with more capability. My answer to them is "why?". That leaves them stumped because they know I use my phone mostly for phone calls and text messages so a fancier phone that does cool stuff still would be underutilized by me.

Anyhow, what y'all have to understand about me and "time" in the summer harvest season is that I have a big harvest of something, like the Saturday tomato harvest, at least a couple of times a week. I then work frantically in the kitchen trying to preserve however much of it we cannot eat fresh. By the time I have cleared counter space in the kitchen and can breathe a sigh of relief, it is time to harvest again. In the last two weeks, we have had multiple harvests of onions, summer squash/zucchini, plums and green beans that equal or exceed the amount of tomatoes shown on that table, so I am always severely time challenged at a time when I actually probably would enjoy taking and posting photos of all the bounty from the garden if only I had the time to learn how to do it and then to do it.

I do not yet know what 2012's harvest will be like overall, but so far it resembles 2010, when I spent probably at least six straight weeks processing food, mostly via dehydrating and canning, for about 18 hours a day every day. In either 2008 or 2009 there was one horrible week when I actually counted the peppers piled up all over the house awaiting processing and there were 1800. Now, at least 600 to 800 of those were tiny bird peppers and all I did with them was wash them and put them in the dehydrator, but dealing with the rest of the peppers took a couple of weeks of hard labor and, in the meantime, I was continuing to harvest more.

Today I am supposed to harvest zucchini and summer squash from my 33 plants (saturation planting was my goal this year and I'll have to explain that later 'cause the tomatoes in the kitchen are calling to me and telling me I need to get busy canning them), green beans from the white half-runners, cukes from the pickling cucumber plants (guess what that means?), and harvest tomatoes again because they are ready today and ripe tomatoes won't wait. I also need to harvest jalapeno peppers. Oh, and dig potatoes. And lay out the drip irrigation lines in the whole garden, weed and mulch the mid-season and late-season corn, and spray the tomato plants with Daconil. Other than that, I have nothing to do today except we need to mow and weedeat 3 or 4 acres in an effort to chase away grasshoppers that prefer tall grass and predator animals that like to remain hidden in it. The downside to cutting the tall grass is that then the bobcats jump the garden gate and hide in/under the tomato plants where they scare the you-know-what out of me when I see them there.

Tim and I joke that we've had 'new' lawn furniture for 8 years and never have sat on the chairs or the glider. That's not much of an exaggeration, but the cats love the lawn furniture and sit on it all the time, and our 120-lb. Rottweiler sits/lays on the garden park-style bench all the time. It is now his bench and not mine.

Carol, It is a ridiculous amount of tomatoes to have at once. We cannot possibly begin to even eat one of each variety fresh before they get overripe. I've given away about 7 gallons of them so far, and today I am dehydrating the bite-sized ones and turning the others into yummy tomato sauce, stewed tomatoes or strained puree. Maybe I'll make salsa. The possibilities or limitless, though the time available is not.

I hope your tomato harvest comes in soon. I know you'll have a great harvest. Y'all know mine is early because I am so far south and because I planted a month early.

Keith, By now you've read my explanation to Mia about how technologically challenged I am. Nothing I said is an exaggeration. I have so much trouble with technological things that I still am amazed every time I send an email or a text message and it actually arrives at its intended destination.

Every year I set a goal for myself in the garden. Really, I have two new goals every year, and I am sad to say that they are the same two new goals every year and I fail miserably at both every year.

Goal #1 always, always, always is this: "This year I will spray every tomato plant with Daconil the very first day I put it into the ground, and then I will do preventive spraying with Daconial, alternating with some other fungicide, on a regular basis for the whole season." This has never happened. It never even has come close to happening, although I think I did spray my container tomato plants with copper in either 2008 or 2009 when they had Septoria Leaf Spot. In fact, I actually did buy Daconil in April 2012, about a month after the first tomato plants went into the ground, and I sincerely meant to use it. So far, it remains unopened, just sitting there on the potting bench in the potting shed like some sort of cute decorative object. I do intend (insert incredulous laughter from my husband here) to spray the tomato plants with Daconil today. The last time I bought a garden sprayer so I could spray the plants with Daconil or copper, it sat unopened in the cardboard box for two years. I hate spraying anything on my plants. I finally opened that box with the new sprayer this year and sprayed Bt on the garden when the variegated climbing cutworms were decimating my garden.

The second goal is always the same: "This year I will figure out how to take photos, how to find them on the phone again after I take them, and how to transfer them to something on the computer so I can post them. Then I'll learn how to post them, and I'll do it until everyone is sick of looking at my garden." So, tell me how I am doing on that goal? (insert laughter here)

If gardening required me to be high-tech, I couldn't garden.

Now I am headed off to the kitchen to get out the tomato strainer and start working my way through all those bowls of tomatoes. Then, after that's done, I'm gonna go outside and pick more tomatoes and then spray my plants with Daconil. Y'all probably shouldn't waste your time expecting to see a photo of more tomatoes today because Chris is at work! lol

Dawn

Wow. What an amazing thread and Dawn's last post was incredible. How did this just die?

TheTradition,

Thanks. We pop up with an amazing thread every now and then. lol

How did it die? Maybe we all were in the kitchen canning tomatoes?

It was that time of the year here.

I was excited to see this thread because it had the photo of my table of tomatoes on it, and I had forgotten about that. I thought I had saved the photo on my computer but....well, I can't find it now, and that is the story of my life.

Dawn