I started my first garden this year, and I just loved it, despite having almost zero success. :) I have 7 huge, 6-7" tomato plants that have given me three tomatoes all year, and two of those were split badly (the third is tiny and still green). I know I made lots of rookie mistakes (which is really part of the fun), but here's what I did:

1. Raised bed with organic potting soil mixed with the native soil.
2. Started the tomatoes indoors in March, transplanted them at the end of April
3. No fertilizer
4. Abe Lincoln, Black Krim, and Cherokee Purple varieties, all purchased from Home Depot
5. Daily misters and hand watering, until some gardening vets told me to turn off the misters and hand water every few days (about a month ago). We have had less than an inch of rain since April.
6. It's hot here, 95-100+ every day, nighttime around 60.
7. No cages, I just kind of let them run wild and tied them to a makeshift stake-and-string contraption when they started to droop.

I have another two months until the first frost date, so I would really love a fall crop of these guys! Any advice would be greatly appreciated, even if it's just to tell me what I should do differently next year! Thanks a lot.

That's a biggie, and also 35 to 40 degree temp swings imply wicked dryness.

Do you have flowers without fruit, or is it a lack of both? These plants in full sun all day? You also have a break in the weather coming right about now, don't you?

Don't forget the pics.

We are in a historic drought in California. It's crazy dry here, and with the late summer fires it's also pretty dusty and hazy. But they had a darn tomato festival here last month, so I know someone is growing them successfully!

I have lots of flowers! Not as much as earlier in the summer when there were tons, but there are still a lot. Some of them wither up completely, and then others, the yellow blossoms wither but the green part that should be the top of a tomato looks good.

Last year it was still in the 90s at Thanksgiving, and then it turned cold pretty quickly. The year before that, we got some fall weather around the beginning of November. The plants are in full sun for most of the day, probably from about 9-4.

Thanks for the help!

I'm sorry all these photos are sideways. They're directly from my phone and I guess that's just how they upload.

In some cases too much nitrogen in the soil causes more vegetative growth rather than fruiting. Was there a lot of nitrogen in the potting soil you used in the bed?

There's an enormous difference between your zones 2 and the OP's zone 9, and one of those is that high heat can cause a chunky stocky indeterminate to get all wonky thin. The plant can also have a hard time recovering from that state when the weather breaks cool after sustained high heat. Maybe it's just emaciation.

Maybe this can be eased by changes in watering/shading/fertilizing. Maybe not, I dunno, but it also tends to produce weeny rooted clones. Again, this happens only to some people in super hot/dry areas. Right now I have one Sweet 100 that's over-summered, a few more that were layered from it in the dirt, a couple that were rooted in water from cuttings from it, and some more that were grown from seed started in July. The mama plant is one sick puppy (that may or may not pull through fruit-wise), the outdoor clones are skinny, the seeded starts are chunky, all except mama are flowering, and there's not a hint of fruit in sight.

Hey, it's an experiment and the dirt's not being used otherwise, but the point is that sustained heat, lack of fundamental soil moisture, and very dry air can smack tomato plants silly.