A Gardeners Forum Forums General Discussion The Food Garden Forum The Tomato Forum shade tomato?

it's a bit early to ask but...is there a variety of tomato that grows/produces a bit better in shade than most?
for next spring, it seems I will either have to MOVE the garden or find a new variety of tomato to grow. the trees have really spread and there is too much shade on the garden now! I know there are hundreds of varieties of tomatoes out there. anyone have any ideas?

No takers on this one? am I fishing in the dark?

if you grow tomatoes in shade a few small tomatoes or none at all will grow.

I have really noticed that this year, emde! hubby has agreed to cut down one tree that is by the garden. that will help some...maybe 1-2 hours more of sun, but I'm still wondering if there are any varieties out there that can stand a bit more shade than others? I know we have lots of mater people out there! help.

My maters get some shade each day.So far I found two tiny tomatoes ripening.

Cricket, I grew Subarctic Plenty and Siberian this year in partial shade - specifically the plants got early morning sun and mid to late afternoon shade. They did very well and produced a lot of fruit. Try these early (usually northern latitude friendly) varieties in your shaded areas. They seem to do well with less than full sun down south. The Subarctic Plenty gave up in early August, but the Siberian is still going with only a slow down during max temp weeks.

I don't know what part of Tx you are in Cricket, But I needed to shade my tomatoes later in their season or the plants would fry. It didn't matter how much water the roots got, the sun did them in. I actually used shade cloth.

I ended up loosing a huge oak to huricane Ike that was shading a lot of my garden. I think next year will be better! I'll keep those varieties you mentioned in mind though. thanks a lot.

I know it's been several months since anything has been posted on this topic but I wanted to add something anyway. There is a winter storm warning here in SE PA today for late this afternoon into tomorrow morning. Depending where you live you could get any combination of snow, ice and rain. The cold miserable weather has me wishing for spring and that of course got me thinking about gardening. Along with other veggies, I started thinking about the types of tomatoes I've had luck with in the past and what I wanted to plant this year.

Cricket - The only place I have all day full sun in my yard is right smack in the center of the back yard. There's no way hubby will let me put a veggie garden there so I've had to make do with a couple of areas that are on the fringe of sun/shade. I did move my tomato garden area last year to an area that gets somewhat more sun than where it was b4 but by no means is it full sun. It lies near a border of very old & tall oak which, depending on the time of the season, put both my garden areas in shade starting from around mid-afternoon. That said, I have still had great luck with grape and cherry tomatoes. The grape type tomatoes are my favorite so I plant more of those but both do exceedingly well without full sun. So much so that I find myself begging people to take some off my hands later in the season when the fruit is at its peak. I've also had some luck with roma (plum) type tomatoes. I find the smaller the fruit the better they do. I have absolutely no luck with beefsteak or other large slicing tomatoes and only marginal with the smaller slicing tomatoes.

If you're like me and like grape and/or cherry tomatoes (great for salads which we eat a lot of in the summer) try some of these types of plants. These are both vine type plants and will need support. I use sections of 4-5' high fencing shaped into a cylinder. It's the kind that has about about 2.5x4" openings which I can just get my hand thru but I've made cuts in some strategic areas of each cage so I can more easily reach through to pick the fruit. You can use other supports but we have dear and this helps to keep them out of my plants (operative word being 'helps' - nothing stops a determined dear). The vines will eventually grow over and/or out of the cages but that just makes it easier to get to the fruit!