Dead tomato plants!!!

[Country kid in the city]

Alright I guess I need a little help. I've grown tomatoes successfully many times out on the farm with the help of grandparents. However now I've moved to the city with very different soil, surrounded by houses and differing sunlight patterns and am having trouble. Last year I successfully grew 1 plant and managed to kill two others - using weed&feed not such a good idea for fertilizer. However lesson learned, had 3 great looking plants - went out of town for the weekend, watered right before we left and in roughly 48 hours one is probably completely dead (no leaves and very pukid stem), another is trying to stay alive (very few leaves, but very wilted stem) - does have one little fruit, and the final has most of its leaves left and has a golf ball size fruit on it - all the leaves are wilted and the stem looks very weak too. The plants were growing normally until the weekend - no rain, windy, highs 80-95F. I put on 13-13-13 pellets a week earlier, and was a little worried that I had burned them, but they pulled out of it. Now I don't know what to do. They have a house ~1 foot to their E and a concrete slab ~1 foot to the West planted 2 feet apart. There are trees ~30 feet high about 20 feet to the West. They get full sun during the main part of the day. Any suggestions? I will probably try to replant with some 1-2 foot potted plants, but I don't want to kill any more.

[TZ -OH6]

Sounds like they are on the west side of the house, which means they could have gotten fried by high afternoon sunlight, but you probably would have seen that soon after planting. With a newly transplant the roots are still confined in the root ball and high surrounding soil moisture doesn't help much once the plant sucks out the water held in the root ball.

Do any of the neighbors spray herbicides or have a lawn service weed and feed their lawn. It takes several days for the herbicides to reach the plants roots and activate so it could have been a week ago or even more.

[rainbowgardener]

agree with TZ, wind and 95 degrees is EXTREME weather conditions. And sorry but it sounds like a terrible site for tomatoes or other non-desert dwellers, just a little two foot strip of soil and the house on one side reflecting heat back at them and concrete on the other side reflecting heat up at them and wind just sucking all the moisture out. Not saying no tomato will ever make it there, will depend on how the weather goes, but it will always be stressful. Here's something I saw "Tomatoes do best within a range of 55-85 degrees F. Tomato plants can be stressed by environmental conditions such as drought, heat, wind" www.advancednutrients.com If 95 degrees is common where you are, it would help to grow tomatoes that are better adapted to it. Google "heat tolerant tomato varieties" and you will get a lot of information.

[myron26155]

Heat is brutal on tomatoes, especially if they aren't a heat tolerant strain.

I live in Florida and I've noticed my plants do become stressed on hot days,(which is like every day down here), and if I fertilize them according to the instructions on the bottle they really suffer when combined with heat.
I read that on very hot days it is best to feed them less nutrients and more water and so far it is working well.
The heat combined with the fertilizer may have done a double whamy on your plants. Just a thought.