Checked my plants yesterday and found 2. Checked again after work and discovered I actually have 4!

It rained heavily here the other day, anything I should watch for?

Also, I do have some very small black bugs on the plants... what should I do to get rid of them?

congradulations, I have some sweet 100's that fell into a flower box that are bearing...what a great year.t

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Hi, I finally gave up on getting well enough to grub in the dirt so I have brought the dirt up to my level--had a ball--looking forward to next season!

Looks like I actually have 5 tomatoes, and we all know how much it rained in Denton last night/today - and is expected to continue for the rest of the week. One or two of the tomatoes seem to have something boring their way into the center. Any advice?

Are these plants you recently planted? I planted mine in March and we're still getting fruit since June.

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Sandi
Texas Certified Nursery Professional
Texas Master Naturalist
Organic gardener
Tree-Hugger
Native Texan

I planted them in August. And I now have 6 tomatoes!

If you start in the spring you'll have tomatoes all season, as long as you're careful with the foliage. Do keep the plants watered, but don't get the leaves wet often, and do the cornmeal juice trick (or others) for the fungus that tomatoes get. I'm still picking tomatoes from plants I put in back in March or April. We do love our BLTs--and the only satisfactory way to make one is with homegrown tomatoes.

Mine have actually put out a few tomatoes, but the hookworms got most of them - to the point that I just decided to pull one of the plants. Now, though... I have two of decent size still on the vine. I didn't pinch off the flowers because I didn't think there was any reason to, and two more tomatoes have started in the last few days. Ah, the magic of living in North Texas!

Last year in the summer or fall I was listening to Howard discuss successful tomatoes with a caller on his Sunday program, and he said that cherry tomatoes and one called either "super terrific" or "super fantastic" (just look for "super" in the name, obviously) are great around here. So I went with those this year. The cherry tomatoes had tough skins, so mostly I blanched them and popped them out of their skins and have them frozen, 2 cups of tomatoes at a time, for cooking. (I just put some in a batch of soup and it was wonderful!) I only freeze the larger tomatoes if I can't eat them or give them away fast enough (I have a lot of them frozen this year!). It was a very good tomato year, with the mild weather, but I think I also made a good choice with these two types.

My "Northwesterner" moniker on this forum is because I'm from NW Washington State, and for all that I can brag about my garden here in North Texas, I visited Seattle a couple of weeks ago and was so envious of the gardens there. Everyone I visited had a garden and compost and varying degrees of organic gardening, but mostly what they had were these end-of-the-season gardens with big plants still heavily laden with huge fruits and vegetables, everything still green and lush and so much fruit there were tomatoes lying on the ground, grapes fermenting on the vine, just too much to harvest it all after a busy summer of harvesting and canning already. I'll keep working on my soil and my watering techniques and how much sun and shade to give the garden, and maybe one of these years I can approximate the gardens of my childhood.

There were some wonderful orange colored low-acid tomatoes at one friends house--they were so sweet and richly flavored. I love acidy tomatoes, but these were remarkable. My challenge for next year--bringing more types successfully through the season. One friend up there had marvelous beefsteak tomatoes, and it turns out they grow them in the greenhouse each summer, knowing that if the leaves get wet they develop the fungus. So the leaves never get wet, and the fruit was incredible. Down here in Texas, the challenge would be to afford keeping the greenhouse cool enough!

Enough rhapsodizing over other people's gardens. Enjoy your few tomatoes this year, hime, and plan now for all that you can grow all season next year. I put in a total of probably a dozen plants, cherry and super fantastic (or whatever) and had enough tomatoes for me, for my freezer, for neighbors, and coworkers.

Northwesterner

I had incredibly good luck with the Porter variety (indeterminate) cherry tomato this year. So much so that I intend to grow them again next year. I only had one plant, and yet I had a constant supply of cherry tomatoes. One day in July I remember counting 50-some tomatoes and 68 blooms!

There were no problems with tough skins and the flavor was great. In fact, the only problem that I experienced with this variety was that the hornworms loved it too.

It seemed this year that my tomato plants had a "second wind" and started putting out LOTS of fruit in August. Now that the acorns and pecans are coming in the squirrels have decided that they have had all the vitamin C they need...and now I have more red tomatoes (Celebrity and Merced) than I can can, make into sauce or eat! My neighors were pleased at first to receive red tomatoes, but now they are giving me the "zucchini eye" whenever they see me coming.