I bought Celebrity, Purple Cherokee (or is it Cherokee Purple?) and a yellow Italian. They are all doing poorly. I have seedlings from last year's plants of Celebrity and a yellow cherry tomato and they're doing better, though not near as good as in the past. This has been a bad year for my tomatoes.

Kat

This is my first official year of having a vegetable garden. I have one Celebrity plant and 3 roma tomato plants - can't remember the variety.

They are growing in raised beds, on the order of square foot gardening. I amended the soil greatly, and will be up to my knees in roma tomatoes in a week or two.

Is everyone else noticing that the toms are ripening much more slowly this year than usual? I am wondering if some of the late varieties will even be ripe before frost.

I'm growing Black Sea Man, Stupice, Marglobe, and various cherries. Some in containers, others in a raised bed. I've been getting ripe cherries and some Stupice for a couple of weeks, but the others are just starting to color up. In addition to the weird weather, it doesn't help that all my toms and peppers were eaten half way down by deer early in the season and have taken a while to grow back.

I'm growing Opalka (red paste), Power's Yellow Heirloom (paste), and German Pink (globe). I raised those from seed.

And I bought an Aunt Ruby's German Green and a Black Krim plant at the last moment.

I live in Central WI and all mine are ripening late too. I've only had 2 Opalka's ripen and some have been green and large enough for a month.

Looks like I'll have apples and tomatoes simultaneously.

I planted Big Boy, Better Boy, Early Girl, Subarctic Early, Mortgage Lifter, Tangerine, Mexicana, Delicious, Beefsteak, Super Beefsteak, Marglobe, and others that I can't think of just now. I've been getting tomatoes from these plants since early August. I have some on the vines that are as big as kitten balls. The plants need to be staked to keep the cages from tipping over from the weight. I start all my tomatoes from seed in spring and this year I've planted more than 70 plants.

I planted 4th of Julys and theyre just starting to ripen. My others (early girls, beefsteaks) are HUGE plants but nothings ripening.

This is my first year w/a vegetable garden, too...and I planted it late, so mine aren't ripe yet (crossin' my fingers!).

I planted Pineapple, Roma and Yellow Boy....I've never had the Pineapple before, but have heard great things about them.
The plants are HUGE!!! and there are several nice tomatoes on them and still lots of blossoms.

The Roma have LOTS of fruits...still green at this point but beginning to ripen.

This first garden is more of an experiment than anything. But now that I've planted one...I don't think I'll be without one.
I'm hoping to get some Pineapple tomatoes before frost...if nothing else at least some seeds from the fruits.

I have Black Krim. But between the late spring and all the hail we had I will be lucky if I get one tomato off my plant this year.

This year, 2 Black Krims that produced nicely and ripened early, plants already pulled out. Brandywine, Betterboy and Beefsteak doing ok, lots of ripe ones but size is small. My Opakla is really producing some nice ripe ones, and the plant is just loaded! The 2 Sungold cherries have done well all year (as they always do!). It's been a great tomato season for me here in Madison, a lot less splitting and cracking. Now, if I could just get some decent cucumbers on the vine, I'd be set!

Black Krim are smallish, Wis 55 just so-so and slow, Mortage Lifter is ok, Cherokee Purple doing ok, but the critters are eating them, and Brandywine is loaded but not ripe yet (maybe the first this week).

tj

Tried 2 different things this year. I went to heirlooms and a florida trellis (weave). The weave went pretty good even though I quit maintaining it a month ago. The heirlooms are great (brandywine especially). I went to Red's outside of Wausaw and bought some brandywine and a 4 pack of "rainbow" which are 4 suprises. yesterday I picked a big yellow one with red streaks on it; I swear it is about 2 pounds. Don't know what it is but I am going to save the seeds out of it.

For my birthday this year I asked for seeds and a flourescent light for getting things going.

I have picked 3 (count 'em, 3) Ark Travelers. Druzba are worthless & a 3rd kind is so pathetic I do it a service by not mentioning it by name. This will go down as the worst tomato harvest in my 30 years of veg gardening. But wait 'til next year..........

So far Ive picked 3-5 ripe 4th of Julys. Id better like fried green tomoatoes cuz the ones that arent being chewed up by every insect in the state arent going to ripen by frost.

What type? Green ones, of course.
I get red, ripe and juicy ones at the Farmers Market on Sat. Guess I will use my own for bocce ball.
Pondy

I grew 45 tomato plants this year of about 40 different kinds, mostly heirlooms. The list includes Brandywine, Brandywine Red, Prundence Purple, Peacevine Cherry, Blondkopfchen, Kellogg's Breakfast, Stupice, Opalka, Abraham Lincoln, Black Krim, Black from Tula, Black Cherry, Black Prince, Earl of Edgecombe, Jaune Flamme, Jubilee, Cherokee Purple, Cherokee Brick Red, Siberia, Aunt Ruby's German Green, Caspian Pink, Czech's Excellent Yellow, Arkansas Traveler, Mortgage Lifter, Green Zebra, Livingstone's Golden Queen, Moonglow, Sun Sugar, Azoychka, and several others I can't remember offhand. I started all the plants myself from both seed I saved from last year and seeds I purchased in the spring. I plan to offer seeds from most or all types in next years' Seed Savers Exchange, so I'm been busy stashing seeds away for the last few months.

This is my second year of growing tomatoes from seed. This year I planted about two weeks later than last year due to the cool spring we had (frost warning here on Memorial Day!). Although everything was two weeks behind, most of my plants performed about as well as last year. Stupice started ripening right around the first of August, with several others starting in the following week or two. I got at least a few fruit from every plant, even those in the 'bad' area of my garden. The plants in the 'good' area of the garden got 5-6 feet tall and produced like crazy. I did have to water twice weekly during the dry weeks of July and August.

Favorites from this year are:

Stupice, for being really early when I'm craving tomatoes.
Kellogg's Breakfast for being huge, orange, juicy and tasty.
Blondkopfchen, for the amazingly huge flower clusters.
Black Prince for the beautiful mahogany coloring.
Abraham Lincoln for being a red medium-sized fruit workhorse.
Azoychka for being a yellow medium-sized fruit workhorse.
And Arkansas Traveler for the 'zing' when I bite into them.

Mike

My tomatoes seem to finally be ripening. We've been enjoying the occasional tomato, but not the scads of them I'd been hoping for.

I planted heirlooms which I started from seed this year. The varieties I tried are Green Zebra, Dr. Wyche's Yellow, German Red Strawberry, Sub-Arctic Plenty, Siletz, Roman Candle, and Fox Cherry. In addition, because I had the space, when I was out at Stein's I saw some anemic looking plants for just a few bucks and thought they'd be worth a shot.

The three plants from the nursery are all completely forgettable- they just don't have the flavor the heirlooms have. My Siletz and Sub-Arctic Plenty are determinates, and were a disappointment. The flavor is good, but the tomatoes have been small and just not very productive. My Fox Cherry never produced fruit, although the plants I gave away to others are thriving like mad. The Roman Candle is a roma-like yellow tomato and not my favorite, I won't be doing that one again I don't think. The clear winners are the German Red Strawberry, Dr. Wyche's Yellow and Green Zebra- so tasty and full of flavor.

I've read that if frost threatens and you have a ton of green tomatoes, that you can pick them, wrap them individually in newspaper, and they will slowly ripen inside that way. I figured I'd give that a try this year if the frost makes it this way before the maters are done.

The newspaper thing works but the tomatoes need to be in good shape (no blemishes or bug holes) or they'll rot. You can also not wrap them but confine them with an apple & they ripen pretty quick.

One year I tore the whole plants out of the ground and hung them upside down by the root ball in the basement. Tomatoes continued to ripen for about a month as the vines still fed them.

Hello, Tomato people,
The wrapping in newspaper works good if you give each tomato a bath in a mixture of 1 ounce bleach to 5 gallons of water to kill any bacteria. Hanging the whole plant upside down in a cool, frost free area also works. I did the newspaper thing a few years back and was still eating my own ripe tomatoes in January.
We're finally getting rain today so things in the garden should be soaking up moisture. My Mortgage Lifter tomatoes are among the best in the reds, along with the Mexicana which are more of a Roma type. The Tangerine are large yellows and very nice.

Planted Roma, WI 55 and some Cherry variety. They all did very well. Learned about compost tea recently. Applied it a few times. Everything is blooming again. I have to ask my farmer friend which type of cherry tomato I bought from him. They did extremely well. I'll try the newspaper and hanging technique for ripening. Thanks for that.