Hi Kim,

So far it hasn't been a totally bad July, huh?

We had temps over 100 last week but it was more bearable because the current cool front/rain were already in the forecast so we knew we'd be getting a break soon after we got through that part of last week, which was our county's hottest weather so far this yer.

This kind of reminds me of the year we had the cold July in an El Nino year (though this is not an El Nino year), which I think was probably 1997 or maybe 1996. We still lived in Fort Worth then, and that year it was cold and drizzly on the Fourth of July with a high in either the upper 60s or lower 70s. It was wonderful. The weather here the last 4 days have reminded me a lot of that year.

That's too bad about the tomato plants. Sudden wilt like that can be caused by various wilt diseases that can reside in the soil, so I wouldn't plant tomatoes in that spot again for the next 3 years. The three most common wilts that affect tomato plants here in our part of the country are Fusarium Wilt, Southern Bacterial Wilt and Southern Blight. Verticillium Wilt can be a problem in some areas but it is more of a cool weather disease so we don't see it very much here in OK and it is likely y'all don't see a lot of it there in your part of TX either.

The reason someone (probably me) said to be careful of your seed source with the tomato varieties you mentioned is that some of the seeds being sold are not true to type. I prefer to buy tomato seeds from a very limited number of suppliers whose tomatoes remain true to type, and that includes Gleckler Seedmen and Sample Seed Shop. It has nothing to do with disease though, just that the size, shape and flavor of the fruit can vary a great deal with some of the seed being sold nowadays that I think is either just flat out incorrectly sold as a variety that it is not or is crossed and no longer true to type. Jay's comments about a couple of varieties years ago, and I think one of them was Cherokee Purple, made me start paying attention and noticing that he was right and that a lot of the seed commonly sold isn't necessarily true to type any longer, which is very frustrating. I then became pickier about where I was purchasing seed.

Wilt diseases are really common under certain weather conditions and pretty much any tomato variety can be affected by them, although there are some hybrid varieties that have been bred for some tolerance of or resistance to some of the wilt diseases.

I always plant far more tomato plants than we need so that if it is a bad year with a lot of disease, I can yank and toss the sick plants and still have plenty of tomatoes. My problem in recent years is that not enough plants have gotten sick and had to be pulled and tossed, so we've been overrun with tomatoes. There's a lot worse gardening problems to have than that, though. I usually see more plant disease in wet years than in dry years, and wet years have become really rare in the last decade.

It has been a great garden year so far. I hope it continues.

I'm sure by the end of the week, we'll be back to whining about the heat, as if that is going to make it go away or something.

Let's look at it this way, though: it is mid-July so we are halfway through the hot summer weather. We're only six weeks away from September. Maybe thinking of it in those terms will make the hot weather more tolerable after this current cool spell ends.

Dawn

Dawn that's what I was thinking. The part about how close sept. is. Planning my fall plantings made me realize we just don't have much hot hot summer left.
I too overplanted tomatoes this year hoping to have plenty to can and give away too. Most of the people within 10 miles say it is again a horrible tomato year here. I actually just picked my first ripe tomatoe today in the rain. I was afraid with all this rain it would split. I still have 10 plants with fruit on and 5 more blooming.
I believe my 3 plants died from something related to being too wet. Nothing nearby has suffered so I am hopeful I got them out in time. There has never been a veggie garden here so nothing lingering from years past, but I will definitely move the tomato area next year if I plant here at this house again.
I am really looking forward to getting fence up and planting at the new place. Theres lot more room to move around over there.
kim

Kim, Based on how how and dry west Texas has been, I am not surprised if many people are having a bad tomato year. Sometimes, though, a relentlessly persistent tomato-a-holic gardener still can have a great year even with others around them are not. You just have to fight harder to have a great year, and overplanting is a part of that more intense fight. So, too, is timing, Timing can be everything with tomatoes. I push the boundaries to plant as early as I reasonably can, and then I do everything I can to protect the early plantings from late cold spells. That gives me my big tomato harvest for canning roughly 4-6 weeks before other gardeners in my area are getting their big tomato harvest, and sometimes even before they are getting their first tomato of the year. Why does that matter? It isn't that I am in a race to have the harvest "first". It is that some years it gets too hot too early and only the early plantings make a big harvest, so the success of any given year may hinge on how early you plant. This year, I was through making the first big round of salsa (47 jars in one very long canning day) even before the local stores started running out of jars and lids, and before many of my local gardening friends had harvested more than just a tomato or two. I planted my tomato plants in the ground 4-6 weeks before most of them though.

Apparently most people here now are getting their big pickling cucumber harvest because last week I noticed the stores had run out of wide-mouthed jars and Mrs. Wages pickling mixes. I've already got 91 jars of pickles put up (we give a lot away to friends and family members, and as gifts at Christmas too) and won't run out of Mrs. Wages pickling mixes because I bought tons of it as soon as the stores put it on the shelves. I probably have enough Mrs. Wages mixes in my pantry for all of next year too.

Are y'all going to be moving to the new place or just gardening there? I can't remember.

Dawn

Right now just gardening but we are planning down the road to move there. we have 9 fruit trees and 1 almond tree and will be planting more this fall. A friend has several pecan trees for us and my FIL down in Collinsville has a bunch of figs for us.
I learn so much from you and everyone here at GW that next year I am going to attempt to put out stuff earlier too. I would love to get a harvest and get stuff canned before the heat.
This is my 3rd summer here this round and by far the best ever. The rain has subsided and I believe we topped out at 4-5" for the week. Who ever heard of rain in July in the panhandle....

I am concerned with my tomatoes. Do y'all think they will burst from too much water? I have a lot of green tomatoes right now. BTW I ate part of our first tomato and I love the flavor its just the texture I am unsure of.
kim

With tomatoes, the earlier I plant, the better the year I have, but that sometimes means planting when it is really too cold for them at night and I have to do a lot to protect them. It pays off, though, when the big harvest hits in early June and I'm canning nonstop in the early June heat instead of in the early July heat that we have in a typical summer. I almost always am canning tomatoes on July 4th because we often have a cool July 4th for reasons I cannot logically explain.

The reason last year was such a great tomato year here was that I was able to start putting tomato plants in the ground during the first week in March. I never really had to worry about cold threatening them after that either because it got so hot so early. That's why a lot of us had such a great tomato year last year----just because we could plant 4 to 6 or even 7 weeks earlier than usual.

I expect y'all have a good July rainy spell maybe once a decade there at best? I bet the farmers and ranchers were really excited, and I hope they got enough rain to make a real difference this year. Here in my part of OK, we have a really rainy July about twice a decade....the two I remember best prior to this year would be 2007 (really the rain was more in May and June but it carried into early July) and 2004.

When you get a lot of rainfall at one time, it can have all kinds of effects on tomatoes. There are a lot of variables, including the size and stage of development of the tomatoes prior to the rainfall. You're likely to see some concentric cracking with large-fruited varieties if they already were fairly mature and about to ripen. The texture of the fruit is likely to suffer and the flavor may seem watered down. You might see rainchecking on the fruit, but it won't affect the flavor, just the appearance. Sometimes there is so much rain you even see longitudinal cracking along with concentric cracking, but that is a lot more rare here.

When a big rainy spell is forecast, if I think that the rain actually is going to fall, I pick all the tomatoes that have reached breaker stage before the rain starts falling. Since we often have heavy rain in the forecast and then it misses us completely, I often wait until it is about to rain and then I run outside and pick everything at breaker stage and beyond. That saves the flavor, texture and appearance of at least those fruit.

A few days of heavy rain will only affect the tomatoes that were fairly large and near ripening at the time the rain fell. The flavor of smaller and less mature fruit that won't be ripe for, let's say another 3 or 4 weeks, generally isn't impacted unless you keep having more rain and then more and more and more. That seems unlikely in your location. If you have cherry tomato fruit that was close to ripening, you'll probably see a lot of splitting.

You shouldn't see the texture issues after next week since y'all undoubtedly will return quickly to your usual hot, dry, miserable summer weather in days, not weeks.

When we have persistent heavy rainfall and the fruit has to grow in it endlessly, the effect on flavor and texture is devastating. In 2004 the rain was more of a May-June thing and was heavy but not overwhelmingly so and the flavor/texture of the early fruit suffered, but by mid- or late-July, the fruit were fine. Then in 2007, we had about 8 or 9" of rain in May followed by about a foot of rain (and weeks of flooding) in June (you might remember that as the year of the big Gainesville, TX, flood) and the fruit wasn't any good at all until sometime in August. Rainfall is good, of course, and I hate to complain about any rain, but in terms of growing tomatoes, it is better to have the heavy rain in April and May when the plants are young and just setting fruit, than to have it in June and July when fruit is ripening and is being harvested.

Often, when the heavy rain severely impacts the texture and flavor of the fruit, I dehydrate the tomatoes about half-way and then use them on sandwiches. Partially dehydrating them can save the flavor by pulling out a lot of the excess moisture, but it does change the texture, and the flavor might improve and intensity after you partially dehydrate them, but there is no guarantee. I also cook a lot with rainfall-affected tomatoes. Using them in salsa, tortilla soup,taco soup, etc. adds lots of other flavors that help make up for the fact that the rain has watered down the flavor and also has had a negative impact on the texture.

Dawn