First, go through this check list for your tomatoes:
Are your tomatoes on the ground at all? If so, get them up as quickly as you can.

NEVER handle the leaves or fruit wet. This creates bruises in the skin of the leaves and fruits and allows bacteria to get into the plant causing rot.

Make sure they have enough sun and room to grow. An even more dramatic pruning may be needed if the sun can't get to the center of the plant at all.

Check the weather. Pick a time you guys are going into a heat wave this summer (give it as long as you can), cut the top foot off of your tomato plants. What this does is force the plant to concentrate on producing sugars that ripen the fruit. It is something farms do to produce before the first frost. I did it two years ago when we had a summer like this and it did work, although I don't think I cut off enough. You really need to cut off quite a bit.

Pruning helps too... cut off all the branches below the first fruiting branch. Make that the first branch on the bottom of the plant. http://www.taunton.com/finegardening/media/g00031_01.jpg Also cutting the side stems back a little bit will help bring the sun into the fruiting parts of the plant. It is a good idea to cut these back some too... although not to the stalk as the plant needs some of these to have enough energy from the sun.

All of these things will help the plant concentrate on making the sugars for the fruit instead of leaf growth.

HTH!

Val

Great, thanks!

I think I'll do some pruning tomorrow.

Its been really hot here we actually had a forced water conservation today. I am hoping this will help. My grape tomatoes started turning but all my romas and others are still green. I have one plant that even though it is caged and staaked its just huge and flopping all over droopy. The poor thing has no chance of sunlight hitting the fruit. So I am going to examine tomorrow hopefully DH understands this pruning diagram better than me because right now it is not absorbing into my pregnancy brain. LOL:lol:

thank you, great advice! i got my first roma off the vine today and have about 4 more that will be ready soon.

they didn't start turning red until i started pruning back my cuke plants. the cukes have been spent (well...i was still getting lemon cukes but the plants looked sorry, i think the borers got them too.) so today i pulled the rest of the cukes out.

all that is left are the tomatoes and peppers, plus some GINORMOUS pumpkin vines (no fruit yet) and some watermelon that are finally starting to grow. we may have late watermelon.

i'll leave the beds empty until sept when i'll plant my fall/winter greens and cabbages. ;)

tomorrow i'll prune the heck out of my romas...

Really? Pruning tomatoes, eh? Well, I could certainly kill two birds with one stone if I pruned the foot off the grape tomatoes that's dragging the ground. They went up and over their cages, then back to the ground, and a foot or two along...

Any advice for tough skins? It's just one variety that I'm having an issue with, and the flesh is still mighty tasty and the deepest red I've ever seen. It's a little watermelon-striped variety from some seeds Sandi sent me. :heart:

Drop them in boiling water for a few seconds. Then dip them in icewater and the skins will come right off. :)

Val

yeah, xt, i'm having the same issue with my romas. good lord those things got tall.

they've bent my tomato cages all to heck. they're twice as tall as my cages...and that's bent over :lol:

i've been overrun with romas...which apparently needed the heat to ripen. go figure.

I did away with cages two years ago. I used to just tie the vines to the garage wall... alas, different house, different set up. But this year I did three stakes, tied in a triangle, and teathered together with twine. Between this and pruning I almost have them under control, but they are outgrowing this 4 ft 'cage' too. lol! So I think tomatoes just need 7 ft stakes (so they can have 5 1/2 foot tall cages) to really keep them in. :) It just means that they are happy and getting tons of nitrogen. The nitrogen is what makes the green parts of the plant happy. No worries... just have to keep them off the ground. I have been thinking about tieing them to either side of a tunnel I could walk through out of PVC pipe. It would make like, a tomato tunnel. lol! Perhaps next year. ;)

This is a picture of the year I tied them to the garage wall. This was in JULY that year. By Sept when they started producing they were seriously 7 ft tall, tied to the wall by screws and and twine all over the place. LOL!

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y299/bluerosemama/Garden%20Pictures/DCP_0011.jpg

Val

yep. i'd say if i was able to straighten mine up they'd be 7' plus now.

Thank you. Some pruning is in order here. We have lots of tomatoes, but they are ripening very slowly. And we have MASSIVE bushes.

Val, would romas grown in a container? is it too late now? I want a bunch because I want to make sundried tomatoes for the winter (dried in the oven).. I don't have anywhere with direct sunlight though.. maybe I should just buy some this year. :lol:

You should just buy this year. I plant my tomatoes in early May. I found a good place though in the Nisqually Valley off Exit 114 (you can SEE the place from the freeway off ramp) that has romas and other canning tomatoes for $11 a box. GOOD DEAL!

Val

I'm hoping to make it down there either tomorrow or Friday.. worst case will be Sunday, so hopefully they'll still have some :)