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I've had a real demonstration of something this year. We've had real strange weather - cool, cloudy, and rainy through May, then since the first week of June it's been about 95 every day with high humidity. We haven't had a break in the hot weather for three weeks now.
I went with a mixture of hybrid and OP tomatoes this year, and I'm glad I did. After losing a couple of plants to stem borers and replacing those with nursery hybrids, I ended up with 10 hybrid plants and 7 non-hybrids.
At this point, I've got about 10 or 12 green tomatoes set on every one of the hybrids - well over 100 tomatoes total. The hybrids (Big Beef, Steak Sandwich, Ball's Beefsteak, and Lemon Boy) are still setting on tomatoes even in these conditions because I see new little ones every day.
I have NO tomatoes on any of the OP tomatoes (Dr. Wyche's Yellow, German Red Strawberry, German Queen, and Gold Medal). Not one, nada. They're all big healthy plants with lots of blooms and I've even been shaking the blooms trying to get some pollen unclumped. No tomatoes.
I think that's a pretty remarkable difference. I'm sure at some point a cold front will come through, we'll get reasonable temps for a few days, and I'll get some OP tomatoes set on - but still, that's a big difference in production.
There may be OP tomatoes that set fruit well in the heat. Apparently not the ones I planted, though. Last year I had all OP tomatoes and they did fine. I'm sure glad I planted some hybrids this year because if I hadn't, with this hot weather, I'd have no tomatoes set on yet and it's almost July.
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