Fall Garden Seed Starting for Texas Heat

[TXTravis]

It's time to start seeds for the fall crop, to be put in the garden late July/early August. Average first frost is Dec 1, so it's a pretty long growing season. The trick is that for the August-September period it's likely to be over 100deg quite often, so plants have to be heat tolerant, but it will also get fairly chilly later in the Fall, so early/smaller varieties are more likely to succeed.

Here's my planned list. Please feel free to critique!

Cherokee Carbon (from pruned current plant/cuttings)
Yellow Pear (from pruned current plant/cuttings)

From Seeds:
Black and Brown Boar
Black Cherry
Chocolate Stripe
Green Zebra
Indian Stripe
JD's Special C-Tex
Jubilee
Porter Improved
Tycoon
Rio Grande

All of these will also go in next Spring, so if y'all think some of these should wait until then, I won't be missing anything. Let me know what y'all think!

[Nan6b]

I really like your idea of starting from cuttings. Way to get a jump on things!

[SpookyShoe]

I never have good luck with fall tomatoes.

If you start from cuttings, wouldn't the new plants carry any disease from the parent plant? My spring tomato plants are just about done for and most show evidence of disease.

[TXTravis]

Good question Donna. I'm really not sure--this is to be my first attempt at both rooting cuttings and at a Fall garden. I think it would depend on the nature of the disease, but I'm no expert on that.

So far I'm seeing some disease on some plants, but most are still rocking along just fine and even set new blooms and fruit in the last week or so. That's a bit surprising to me, but I water a lot and it hasn't been super hot this year (except that one day at 102). The Cherokee Carbon may not be viable for Fall, but I'm not sure I could kill the Yellow Pear if I wanted to. I plan to root some cuttings and cut the current plants back heavily and see if they make it as they are. If both cuttings and cut back plants do ok, I'll just give the babies away to my dad. Gonna be gone all weekend, so seeds will get started on Monday or Tuesday next week.

[karstopography]

I had great luck years ago with fall tomatoes inside the 610 loop in Houston. Kind of when I came to know and love Carmello as it produced all fall and winter. But, that far into Houston was well protected from chills the outlying areas received.

I did a few plants last fall in my current location. Supremo, Phoenix, Dixie Red. Definitely got a few tomatoes, but my attention to them was indifferent. Seems like the plants weren’t very healthy and I ripped them out pretty early in favor of cool season vegetables.

This year, the plan is to be a little more attentive. I have already started seed, Neptune, Ozark Pink, Tropic, but that’s off to a rough start as a wild animal knocked over my 6 pack trays. Still, some remain untouched and are tiny growing seedlings. I’ll plant a few more seeds pretty soon. Not sure what types yet. I guess if i fail with all that, the feed store has sets in August. I don’t think I’ll do more than 10 plants, maybe half that.

[Texgal]

Hey I second your opinion on Yellow Pear. I think that variety is part weed and you have to deliberately kill it to finally get rid of it. I threw one in a 1-gallon grow bag one year just as a larp and that thing STILL grew right up my mother's carport post to the roof and put out tomatoes! LOL!