Tidying the Tomatoes

Growing tomatoes is a little trickier in Texas, at least it is for me.  Once the weather gets hot and dry, my plants always start declining.  Typically, before the end of August I have some brown crunchy plants.  Also the heat prevents them from setting fruit. 

This year was not much different.  After a wonderful spring where I was inundated with tomatoes, the majority of my plants have once again been toasted by summer.  It finally was time to pull them out.  The only two the made the cut were the Porter and the Sugery.

This is NOT how the Sugery Tomato is looking right now

The Porter had been recommended to me by someone local as a tomato that stood up to the summer.  While it isn't producing any fruit, it also isn't dead, so I'm calling it a win.  The Sugery is also not looking great, but not looking horrible, so it also got a reprieve.

The back two raised beds in the vegetable garden (Ignore the toasted lawn...we don't water the "grass" back here)

You can see here that taking out the tomatoes had left two of my raised bed virtually empty.  All that's left are the two tomatoes I didn't pull and some strawberries and purslane along the edges.  I have a new batch of fall tomatoes ready to plant.  We just need to create a little temporary shade for them so they can get acclimated to the garden.  Hopefully next weekend.