I moved to South Dakota and my growing season is basically June to October. Even though the season is short it can be over 100 degrees F for weeks.

I value flavor over anything else and am wondering what the best tasting tomatoes would be for short and hot growing seasons?

Seems like an excellent question.

Early Girl- Heat Tolerant (HT)
Early Girl Bush -determinate-(HT)
Stupice - Does well in heat
Oregon Spring -Both hot and cold
Siletz - Determinate does well in heat
Jet Star - productive in heat
Super Sweet 100 -cherry -Heat lover- just about any cherry

Had a friend married to a full-blood Sioux woman and spent his vacations on the reservation. He was impressed with the amount of tomatoes they were growing, don't remember what kind, you might ask the co-op or the extension office.

I’d try some of the mid season known for flavor tomatoes and hope for some good weather. Maybe fall in love with small fruited cherry, grape and similar types since many of those set better in heat and don’t take forever to ripen. Get on the hybrid Sungold bandwagon. They do okay in hot weather to a point, just be careful with the watering.

A bulletproof tomato in hot weather is “Coyote”. I don’t think any heat on earth will stop that tomato from flowering and setting fruit. Definitely thrives in 100° plus weather. Too bad the tomatoes only weigh between one and two grams each. The hotter the weather, the better they taste. Shelf life best measured in seconds. These are pick and eat immediately tomatoes.

Bloody Butcher would be one worth considering. As is Peravyua Lubove ( Spelling not right, translates as First Love from Russian, one that @Tormato has high praise for.)

Have a look through the MMMM master tomato list as a starter, cross check with Tatiana's Tomatobase, here, TV and various retailers for more information on the various varieties. Look for earlies to start with until you get a few years under your belt so you have a good understanding of the seasons there. If you can start them indoors with heat you can have six or eight week old plants ready to go by plant out time, how many depending upon space and how big a pot you are prepared to have them in.

You might try Maglia Rosa. It puts up with my N. Florida conditions pretty well.

There’s a member that grows all kinds of tomatoes in Nebraska and maybe his season is a little longer, but the summer heat ought to be similar. Try searching @Paulf posts on what works in nearby Nebraska.

karstopography wrote: ↑Fri Aug 09, 2024 7:37 am There’s a member that grows all kinds of tomatoes in Nebraska and maybe his season is a little longer, but the summer heat ought to be similar. Try searching @Paulf posts on what works in nearby Nebraska.

If you are in Eastern S.D. and south of N.D. you would be pretty much in the same tomato growing area as Nebraska and Iowa. Almost any tomato variety with a less than 100 days to harvest will do OK. 80 days to maturity would work very well. The season may be a little shorter because the start date is later but most tomato varieties catch up very well in June weather. I see suggestions for hybrids above but I have not grown a hybrid in maybe 30 years and concentrate on the thousands of Heirloom/Open Pollenated varieties that actually taste good.

Your temperatures and ours are not so different, so that should not be much of a factor. Depending on your location east to west, the rainfall would be more of a factor. PM me what you like in a tomato and I will send a list of possibilities.

It's always best to plant a diverse group of varieties. With a 4 to 4.5 month growing window, it makes sense to grow some varieties like Maglia Rosa, Sungold, and Stupice for early production. Most heirlooms should give you 2 months of production. Planting a few determinates would be a good idea as an insurance crop.

On our farm in in north central Nebraska, we'd get a bad hailstorm every 4-5 years so I'd suggest you grow a few tomatoes in containers. Move them under cover if storm clouds threaten.

You may want to checkout my grow log (San Antonio Sandbur Patch) on this forum. In San Antonio we have a short 3 month growing window between the last frost and the advent of consistent 95+ degree days when almost all tomatoes simply die in the heat.

Yes, we get terrible hail here. I ran outside with a cardboard box and tried to shield my Black Pineapple tomatoes. My wife later asked if I had given any thought to protecting the car . I am going to build some sort of hail net or small greenhouse for next year.

Timeless Tomatoes is in Nebraska. Here's an archived version of their old larger selection of varieties (some varieties in the list are peppers):

https://web.archive.org/web/20190629054 ... m/ind.html

You might try Green Tiger. It's really tasty.