Tomato Question

Hi Gardeners! I was wondering if you guys knew of any tomato varieties that would produce fruit at night-time temps 50-55 degrees. The day temp of course would be substantially higher. Thanx in advance,

-Tony

I'm not sure, but I think that temperature is fine. We have cool nights here in the summer and all of my tomatoes had fruit. I had several different kinds. Some hybrids, some heirloom

We had a very cold spring and even a late snow storm the June 6th weekend. It remained cold the entire weekend and all my tomatoes were fine.
This picture was June 17th

And this was Aug 2nd. I think it is 14ºC or 57ºF temp that is a recommend "low" temperature for growing. I have also heard that if the tomato seedling are in a lower temperature after the 2 leaves form, that the fruit production increases significantly.

I've been told it is more an issue of light than temperature for flowering during the winter in a greenhouse, but I'm trying anyway.

I think light and heat during the day are going to be bigger issues than the night time temps--I know that people around here who live a bit closer to the coast than I do have trouble growing tomatoes (even during the normal growing season) because the weather just doesn't get warm enough during the summer. Where I am our nights regularly get down into the low to mid 60's during the summer, but it gets hot enough during the day and it's almost always sunny so most tomatoes do fine.

Tony, I've always heard tomatoes (any and all) could be out in the garden when the night time temps remained above 50. Sounds like you are good to go. :)

Ecrane, we really appreciate hearing from you! Always very helpful and informative!

Joanna, what is the red that is around your plants?

Cathy, did you just move already producing summer tomatoe plants into the greenhouse, or did you start or buy new plants?

I'm playing with mine right now, trying a bunch of ideas that I read on earlier threads about winter greenhouses. We put it up a month ago. I've started cherry tomatoes, broccoli, carrots, onions, radishes and beets. The germination rate was pretty high. I don't have any high expectations of growing summer vegetables in the GH over the winter (not using a heater), but want to see just how much I can do.

They are called Kozy Kotes. Basically a round tube wall that you fill with water, which holds the heat in. It more for spring protection of frost, but the plants out grew them, so I left them all season.

They worked well!

I didn't think to move a tomato from the garden, I started new in the house then transferred out to the GH. By the end of summer, my plants were pretty pitiful looking.

Hi Tony. Your tomatoes will do great here in the Willamette Valley. We use black plastic over the rows to warm the soil earlier in the Spring and punch holes to plant seedlings. We also use Wall-O-Water so we can plant out earlier in the Spring (end of March/first of April). We have grown Matt's Wild Cherry tomato with great success here. The plants get huge and are still producing when all other tomato varieties have been killed off by frost. : ) We learned we only need one plant of this as it gets so big and produces so heavy. Picture is one plant in a 4 x 8 raised bed using the above method. It grew over 9 feet tall. We had to keep pruning it to keep it from taking over the other near by beds. I can send you some seed if you like.