Just back from the feed store with 5 gallon sized plants. New development this year - the grower neglected to indicate whether they are indeterminate or determinate on some of the varieties. Kind of a crap shoot for me - I prefer indeterminate as I grow them on twisty stakes.

Nice tomatoes Texaskitty! Your green tomatoes are much bigger than my green tomatoes!

Deb, Just buy the varieties you like and don't worry too much about it.

I pruned off all the tomato branches that were crowding the plant, and had no blossoms or tomatoes on it. So this:


Now looks like this:

Very nice. I am one of those people that do not prune my tomatoes. Only if a branch is totally in the way or something like that do I cut it off.

Rita, the more healthy leaves you have, the more sugar they will make for the fruit. Also they will shade the fruit from sun scald.

I've never pruned anything off a tomato plant unless it was dead. Tk, I think what you need are bigger tomato cages so the branches can spread out more.

Could be. I've been flipping them upwards each day so they won't grow out. I don't like them sagging. Last year I had bigger cages, let them grow out, and they started touching each other, and drooping to the ground.

I've been comparing the dates regarding size, first bloom, tomato size for last year versus this year. My plants last year were much bigger but had few tomatoes. This year the plants are smaller, but already blooming. I haven't used any canned fertilizer this year. Anyone have any tomatoes yet? I have a few winter squash, but no tomatoes yet.

The only thing I really make note of from year to year are the dates that I set my transplants out and plant them in ground. The dates the tomatoes first set I would never remember and the dates I finially get ripe fruit to eat vary so much from year to year. And that also depends on which tomato varieties one is growing.

As Rita already said I was going to say it depends a lot on the variety you're growing, too. Some early varieties will set fruit quite quickly, as soon as the night temperatures stay above 55 or so, but then they might stop when the temperatures get really high as well. If it gets hot really early, they'll stop setting fruit sooner.

Some of the more heat-tolerant types will keep setting fruit in higher temperatures. My daughter in Utah is trying a new one (to us) called Sioux. It's actually an heirloom variety that boasts a "reliably large harvest even in hot weather" so we'll see how it likes the month or so of 100+ degrees they have in July. http://www.tomatogrowers.com/M...

I have a hybrid I'm trying here called Solar Flare, that's supposed to last longer into our steamy summers. I think it will depend upon how resistant it is to the blights that seem to hit all my tomatoes in June.

Last year I tried many extra early types. Mostly I found small tomatoes that weren't all that terribly tasty.

Ive got 3 from HI. Cant get much hotter or humid than that. They are all determinates, so hopefully ill get some tomatoes before they shut down. No blossoms on them yet.
Kewalo
Anuhu
Healani

Those sound really interesting. Do let us know how well they did.

Well, Hawaii is humid, but not all that hot, actually. Even in summer, the sea temperature keeps it down to the mid-80's for the most part. We went a couple of times in June, which should be the hottest month, and the sun was intense but the breeze was always cool.

We don't get all that hot here, either. I think 96 is the highest temperature I've ever seen here. What limits the bearing on our tomatoes is the warm nights. When the night temperatures stay above 80 all night the tomatoes just can't take it, they either stop blooming or just give up altogether.

Good to know.

I haven't even started my seeds yet!!