I started my hardening off on/about March 26 and subsequently planted out starting April 4, 5 and some later. So it has been 2 months since then. It has been a long and challenging 2 months. with lows going down to as low as 38F, without any protection. Now, I have already fruits setting on my tomatoes.

What I want to share is how slow moving PNW weather is. Per attached image , this coming night our low will be 47F. No kidding here. That happens all the time. Somebody, while back provided a link in which somebody else said that night lows under 50F can seriously damage and even kill tomato plants !! Hmmm really? Come visit my tomato garden.

I also while back read a comment that a poster quoting a German gardener saying that they consider tomato plants a semi shade plants (NOT full sun). That was also interesting because I am getting about 4 -5 hours of full sun ( depending on the spots) on top of cool PNW weather.

So this is my real garden experience and story and it is not base on any fiction or opinion and speculation.
You might have totally different experience. That is just fine with me.

What's really impressive is when you've had a sunny day inland, and you drive back to the coast. There is just this wall of clouds starting at a few thousand feet and going way way up. You drive under that wall to get home.

(link fixed)

10 Tips for Growing Tomatoes in the Northwest

Tips for growing Tomatoes in the Pacific Northwest

MEN: Best Varieties for Pacific northwest

Tips for growing organic tomatoes in the Northwest

Growing: Tomatoes in the Pacific Northwest

Grow Northwest: Tomatoes

Tomato and pepper growing in the Pacific Northwest

Thene there are all the resources offered by the Washington State University extension services for home gardeners.

Gardening in Eastern, Western or Inland Pacific Northwest

Dave

--- Japanese trifle black (Russia)
--- Siberian
--- Silvery Fir Tree Russia)
--- Stupice (Check rep)
--- Matina (Germany)

They are all loaded with buds and blossoms right now and some have small fruits.

Any Western WA, NW OR grower around here? I would like to know how you are doing.

Have a nice weekend !

Dave

About the varieties selection, I am ahead of many of those discussions:
--pick early varieties ( I am growing mostly those)
-- pick small fruiting ( That is what most Early varieties are, plus cherry type)
-- pick cool weather tolerant varieties : Have done that too: SILETZ, SIBERIAN, LEGEND, STUPICE,....

Season Extension:
Done that too.Have used black plastic weeks before planting covering the beds, to warm up the soil. Have made and used Cold Frame and hoops and used them as well.

So , really there are no secrets. You have to find ways to cope with the cool weather and I have been doing just that AND this year I will be harvesting some ripe tomatoes on or before The Fourth of July, from my own starts. That should be a record here, since most gardeners plant out in the last half of May. They cannot get any thing ripe until mid August. So in reality I am the source of best information myself.

Maybe my future self will decide to start a year with preventative spraying.

After nearly TWO months, I see some fruits, though not ripe. But my plan has been to have them ripe by The Fourth and probably will.
The picture is showing one of my SILETZ taken today . Some other (Bloody Butcher, Sun Gold) are also setting fruits. That is not bad , considering that our night lows are still in 46F to 52F range.

I usually don't start my seedlings until late March/early April since I usually don't plant them out until late May/early June. This year I started them in early April but lost most of them since the EB Stone starter mix I was using stayed too wet, and the seedlings rotted. I was able to save and repot 8 of them, and they're now growing but only about 2" tall. Instead, I "cheated" and went to the farmers market and nursery and bought starters in 4" and 1 gal pots.

I've tried a few of the early and yellow varieties (e.g. Kimberley, Jaune Flamme, Porkchop, Orange Russian, etc.), but they all had very mild flavor, barely better than store bought tomatoes, but that may have been because summer 2011 and 2012 were unusually wet and cold. In contrast, each year I've grown them the cherries like Sungold were sweet and delicious and the black tomatoes had such amazing flavor. I decided I'd rather wait an extra week or two to get much better tasting tomatoes, so these are the varieties I'm growing:

Cherry: Sungold, Sun Sugar, Matt's Wild Cherry, Black Cherry, Isis Candy
Black: Cherokee Purple, Paul Robeson, Japanese Black Trifele
Other: Jet Star, Green Zebra, Chadwick, Moscovich

I usually put black plastic on the ground 5-6 weeks before I plant out the tomatoes, but I was really disorganized this year and just put the black plastic over the beds when I planted the starts. I also have PVC hoops over my tomato beds and usually put clear plastic over them to keep them warmer, but since our highs have been in the 70s, I've kept them uncovered and just put 2L bottles full of water beside each plant to keep them warmer at night. The plants were about 8-12" tall when I planted them on June 2nd using Mycorrhizal Fungi and EB Stone Tomato and Vegetable Food, and many had flowers on them while the Sungold and Jet Star already had fruit. Now, about two weeks later, they're all about 2-4" taller, and they all have open flowers and most also have small fruit.

Based on my experience here in Seattle, tomato plants are usually stunted while daytime temps are in the 50s and 60s, even using plastic covers. Plants usually only start growing and producing flowers and fruit when the heat finally arrives--well, relatively speaking since "heat" in Seattle usually means highs in the mid-60s to mid-70s. In 2011 and 2012, with typical summer highs in the 60s, fruit set took about 40-50 days from planting, and color break took another 40-50 days. In 2013, which was much warmer with typical highs in the 70s and 80s, fruit set took about 25-30 days from planting while color break took an additional 35-40 days.

The control group stayed in their 1 gal pots, which I performed the "tomato shuffle" with every day in and out of my garage until Mothers Day (5/11) when I put them in the ground. Both groups went through the same hardening off period.

Results? Control group is almost twice the size if the early group, have way more flowers and some with good looking fruit already. Pic below is of a bloody butcher from the control group. I may continue to experiment with tunnel/greenhouse setups, but it seems to pay dividends to keep a portable group of seedlings that can be brought indoors overnight and planted when things are definitely warm enough.

I do think that hoop and some small low tunnel is very dandy in our PNW climate. We have a very loooong cool spring and if you go by general standards of planting out , you have to wait til July. (lol). right now there are lows down to 46F in a couple of days (coming Sat. night) and we have not seen any lows nearing 60F so far. This is a COOL country.

MY UPDATE:
Things are normal and happening slowly. All my mato plants are flowering and maybe half of them have some kind of fruits. They are mostly about 4 ft tall. I am using some cages and more stakes as support.

OK. let us hear from all of you folks along the PNW, from Oregon all the way to Canada.

Glacier
Siberia
Silvery Fir Tree
Italian Roma
Martino's Roma
San Marzano
Stupice
Japanese Trifele Black
Cherokee Purple
Black Krim
and two mystery tomatoes that came out of my Glacier seed packet. They are RL and Glacier is PL, so we're growing them out just for fun! And actually one of the them was the first fruit set of the year, so it might be a good variety to grow again.

Seems that we have a lot of common varieties ;
stupiece, Siberia, Siletz, Cherokee Purple, Silvery Fir Tree, Japanese Trifele Black,

I am growing 2 varieties developed by OSU:

Legend, Siletz,
Plus few more early ones. My plants are all loaded with buds, flowers and small fruits too. We need some warm temps. The night lows are still very low. We need them to climb over 60F. Today it is very nice and sunny, high around 75F. Ten days forecast is about the same.

Okee Dokee. Have a good season and keep posted. We can all learn from each other.

You are right, vinny. I take it.Do you have any pictures ?

My plants are as healthy as they can be. They are growing and setting. But seems that the thing are on the low gear.
I am using MG liquid (4 x 16 oz bottles. ). I feed them 1/2 strength but more often. This way I can read my plants. I have also used MG Shake n Feed in plant out time.

here is my Silvery Fir Tree . it is potted

On JTB, I am growing one. Mine has no visible fruits yet BUT it is a POTATO LEAFE with real big leaves. Is yours PL ?

You are right. It is supposed to have pear shaped fruits not round.

My JBT has VERY large PLs. Much larger than what I see in your picture No fruits yet (just tiny pea size maybe). I bough mine from nursery and planted it out about 5-6 weeks ago.

About Fruit Shape: Here is a picture that I got from the net. It is more pear shape to me.

On Another Note:

I sprayed my plants with Daconil today, for the first time, as preventive measure. I will repeat in 2 weeks. Forecast is calling for rain and cooler temps over the weekend. I may skip watering. We shall see.

Seysonn, hopefully, your July 4th wish comes true and you start seeing some coloring on your Siletz.

Yeah, I'm also getting unusually big clusters on my Cherokee Purple and Paul Robeson plants. None have set any fruit yet, so it's too early to see if all of the blossoms will turn into fruit. One can only hope!

With our current long term temperatures, we are getting ready for a big burst. Finally we are having summer like weather.

I will post some pics soon.(got to see some red and gold. haha)

Our heat zone is "1" , meaning that rarely (one or two day in whole summer) high temps reach or exceed. 86F (30C). But our long term forecast for the next 10 days show highs between 88F and 98F. Also the lows climbing over 60F for the first time this season. Wow ! what a big bubble.
Now this should help my tomatoes ripen a bit faster.

here is a snap shot of weather forecast.

I am not worried about blossom drop. I have plenty of fruits set already. Plus, I don't get a lot of direct sun and our humidity is low as well as night temperatures. I am sure that this heat wave will only last for a couple of weeks at the most and pollination should resume normally soon after.
I think of this heat wave as a plus to speed up growth and ripening fruits.
We will see.