IÂm also in a condo, and only get about 4.5 hours of sun, at peak season. This year IÂm growing Big Beef, Sungold, Druzba, Sweet Million, Tumbling Tom, Husky Red, Japanese Black Trifele, Black Cherry, Black Krim, German Black, and Black. All the plants are healthy, and IÂve already picked a few tomatoes.

I would look for highly productive varieties with shorter Days to Maturity. Cherry varieties would be a great choice. Naturally, the plants may not grow as large, or produce as many flowers, and the taste may not be quite as good compared to 8 hours of sun, but at least your sister will have something! It wouldn't hurt to try ...maybe she could pick up a few transplants from the FarmerÂs Market or nursery.

I only get about five hours of sunshine in my garden, but still managed an average of 24 tomatoes per plant last year. My highest yielder of beefsteak type tomatoes was German Head. Go for it.

TomNJ

Hey, don't feel bad. We';re not really getting ANY sun here in Seattle. I think we've had an hour's worth over the last two weeks!

I'm not an expert in this topic yet, but it interests me. I would start with varieties that fruit well indoors. My Galapagos Island tomatoes (Solanum cheesmanii) produce occasional, and good-tasting, fruit indoors on south window light. Some peppers, tomatillos and ground cherries fruit more indoors than most tomatoes do indoors, though, in my experience. E.g. Early Jalapeño and Purple Beauty peppers, Amarylla tomatillos, Aunt Molly's ground cherries, etc. You could probably find more productive peppers for low light, though. My peppers had such as artificial lighting and north window light.

If you get any hours of direct sunlight, I would certainly recommend trying tomatoes to see how they do. Black Plum tomatoes seem to be fruiting well in our shaded garden where it gets less hours of direct sunlight than might be ideal. I'm growing some in the front yard where they get loads more sun. So, we can compare fruiting and flavor between them soon.

Galapagos Island and Black Plum are indeterminate, though (so perhaps not compact). Aunt Molly's ground cherries are very compact. Peppers can be very compact, too, of course.

I don't know about few hours of direct sun, but I grew last year a few tomatoes in the SHADE - no direct sun whatsoever.
The plants grew high, leggy, thin stems, few leaves, very few suckers, very few / small fruits.

Try a tiny or tumbing tom or maybe a red robin? Cherry tomatoes tend to produce in less light than BIG tomatoes because they are so vigorous. They will be leggier than usual and will not produce as much....but should still give some tomatoes.

Old thread but the subject comes up often.

This is my 4th season growing tomatoes with about 4 hours (+/-) of direct sun plus some dappled sun and of course long hours off INdirect light. I have been growing just about any kind of tomatoes that I want. I know it is not an ideal condition but it is ok.
Don' forget that direct sun is not the only source for plants photosynthesis. . Indirec light in a bright day can provide as much light/close to under fluorescent light. Add that to long summer days, then that will add up.

Having said the above, I think you can grow tomatoes with 2 t0 3 hours of direct sunshine plus whatever indirect light that there is. .

I'd recommend you buy the most productive hybrid cherry tomato you like and go with it. It is a whole lot more manageable for the plant to pop out cherries conforming it its resources than beefsteaks. Sungold.... got a couple of tomatoes inside in the shade, though the plant looked scary.

My best low light performers last winter and then, yet grown in mostly shade, were Super Sweet 100 and saved seeds from Santa Sweets "Santa F1" grape F2 tomato plants. Getting scraggly stems unfortunately is par for that course. All the plants do that when rationed light, so while not recommended, you can experiment with it.
PC

Maskotka. They're more patio tomatoes that you can let them sprawl over the container, but great in flavor and two plants provided more than enough for us. They're not big, but they are bigger than cherry tomatoes. Plump and juicy, sweet.

I have one growing in full sun now but I look back to my old condo patio conditions where I had about 3.5-4 hours of direct sun and marvel at how well they did; I am not noticing any big difference in size since giving them full sun.

Really good germination rate, too. I still planting my first seed packet from 3 years ago!

Hope that helps.

Another Point:
Temperatures are also co-related to amount of direct sun. In warm/hot climates you can do better with less sun. In cold climates direct sun act as "Heat Source", to help the plant grow better. No wonder down south they shield the plants (by sheets /screen) from direct sun, when the air temps are already high.

Sey

I get 6 to 7 hours of direct sunlight. I tried convincing my neighbor to cut his huge maple tree down which would give me another 4 or 5 hours. No luck.

Vince, 6 -7 hours of direct sun is pretty good and by definition it is in "FULL SUN" classification. I do not have the scientific data, but plants need certain amount of lumen to do their photosynthesis. Part of it can come also from indirect/defused light as well. With our 14 to 16 hours of day length, there is plenty of it. JMO

Sey

This is an important discussion, because it is revealing about a curiosity that some commenters have hinted at. Plants seem to do quite well in cloudy weather, where they almost never see direct sun. I have had a mostly cloudy spring, and my tomatoes are going bonkers. They're quite happy and very productive. Maybe as much as if it had been clear all the time. I'm surprised that they don't even look that leggy.

It would be interesting to see some real research on this, but it seems like many plants will do fine as long as they get a lot of at least indirect sunlight. That is, where the plants are, they have to see a lot of sky, if not direct sun. The cloudy sky is really pretty bright, but the light is coming from all angles, instead of just one. In fact, even blue sky is pretty bright, so a plant that never sees direct sun (in local shade) but sees a lot of blue sky around that blocked sun can do quite well.

The idea that plants need many many hours of direct sun is simply not borne out in any garden I've grown. I agree, however, that they won't tolerate a lot of shade, which blocks both direct and indirect light. That rule is one that needs some careful examination. No question that direct sunlight provides much more light than a cloudy day does, and no question that plants use light for photosynthesis, but it's not at all clear that plants really need all of that light.

That being said, my guess is that if the balcony in question sees a lot of the sky, but doesn't see a lot of direct sun, plants will do fine there.

I personally think your soil and the UV/infrared indexes are important variables in how plants respond to light, too.

Kind of depends on your definition of "fine." Also, which plant you are growing makes all the difference, too, as well as your area. Light shade in AZ vs. WA are two totally different beasts. :) And it works both ways: I know in my area, full sun plants, including tomatoes, are not appreciating it when the temps go above 100....and they may do better in less sun or a bit more intermittent shade. All that just to say that I agree with you, with conditions. :-D

Tomatoes in my area (western Idaho) don't seem to mind temperatures above 100° F. (it's usually between 89° F. and 103° F. for the daily high in mid to late May and all through August and maybe also September, but it can get as high as 113° F., and often does get around 110° F. for a week or two during June/July/August, and has been that hot longer at least once--that was two or three years ago, I believe). The lows are usually at least 30° lower than the highs. It's supposed to be 109° F. here on Sunday and Monday a week from tomorrow, already (June 28th and 29th, 2015). I hope the tomatoes do well. :)

There are some other subtleties that come to bear. First of all, when the sun shines through a hole in an otherwise overcast sky, plants get more light than if the sky were clear. That's well known to people with solar panels on their houses, who get significant power generation even when it is completely overcast. The clouds reflect sunlight that would otherwise go somewhere else. That being the case, a plant that sees a lot of the sky, but doesn't get a lot of direct sun can get lots of light if it is cloudy enough. Secondly, the clouds light up the sky even when the sun is very low, so it actually gets dark faster when the sky is clear.

The desert southwest of the U.S gets about 40% more sunlight than I do here in Texas. All other things being equal, I don't think you'd get 40% more tomatoes in the desert southwest than you would here in Texas.

I realize this is a long dead post, but since I came across it in my recent searching, I figure others might as well.

I'm no expert, just started out this year. But I have managed to successfully raise sweet million cherry tomatoes to fruition in my zone by basically being hard-headed and ignoring the experts and trying anyway even though all research done before starting lead me to believe it was pointless without 7 hours of direct sunlight and massive quantities of expensive supplies lol

Now please note, my fellow low-light balcony gardeners; I had 2 plants in a single pot too small for even one plant, according to the "experts". I had one 1 gallon hanging basket and some miracle grow moisture control potting soil, and some free sample seeds. Not enough sunlight. No money for fertilizers, etc. Yet I got about 40 beautiful little "sweet million" cherry tomatoes. There's still some green ones yet to turn, but I have hopes for the little fellas beating the frost.

Point being, It can be done. Just make sure you keep the soil evenly moist, fertilize about once every couple weeks. I have a very small fixed income, so I made do with what I could come up with on the cheap at home. Hours of research led me to coffee grinds, powdered eggshell, tums, powdered nori (there was a marked leap in fruit size about two days after adding the nori, oh boy did they love that), earthworm dirt, wood ash, and pee {yes pee is great for tomatoes, google it. Make sure it's healthy pee, no UTIs or YIs. And NO, your tomatoes do not have pee in them because they grew in pee, any more than mushrooms have poo in them because they grew in manure lol}. Just mix those things together and massage them into the top 2 inches of the soil and water about 8oz.

Now, please note: for the love of all that is good on earth, DO NOT PRUNE if growing in low light. The plants need every leaf they can get to absorb as much light as possible. And with indirect sunlight accounting for most of their energy, the fruits do come out slightly undersized. They're about 1 inch in size. And they do take a long time to grow to the fruiting stage, and about 35 days to ripen after fruit set, so you gotta start em indoors really early, and set them out the second the last frost passes. Buzz your flowers with an electric toothbrush to ensure pollination. It takes daily attention, time, and effort, but man oh man do they taste great. They make store-bought taste like cardboard.

I think experts get so hung up on how they always do things that it never occurs to them that things can be done differently. Being completely broke with children who adore cherry tomatoes that are insanely overpriced in local stores is a great motivator for ingenuity and discovery =D

I think the experts are usually trying to push people toward the most optimal conditions possible so that you get the best outcomes possible. You can do with what you have, and should absolutely do so if that's your only option, but you're not going to get the outcome that someone with optimal conditions will. I don't think people are telling those who have no other options to give up, usually the advice I see is for people who could improve their conditions so that they get better outcomes.

Having said all that, I'm glad your experiment went well and you got to eat some delicious tomatoes and can look forward to doing so in the future :)

Maybe they intend it that way, but from a noob perspective, the phrasing is very misleading in most cases. For example; many advice articles say things like "tomatoes NEED 6-8 hours of direct sunlight a day to produce fruit"...(hell, even the seed packets themselves say it sometimes haha) which leads the new folks who are the ones looking for advice in the first place to believe they can't grow tomatoes without it. They ought to say "tomatoes SHOULD HAVE at least 6-8 hours of direct sunlight a day to produce OPTIMAL NUMBERS AND SIZES of fruit", which is far more accurate. My comment was merely to redirect a few others who have been ill informed by these poorly phrased expert articles to try anyway, not to insult the nice people who are trying to honestly help lol

I agree about the misleading phrasing. The way it's usually explained, it seems like your plants will die a horrible death if they don't get seven hours of sunlight. In fact, while you got 40 cherry tomatoes, more sunlight might have gotten you 60. Who cares, unless maybe you're selling them to try to pay the rent. I get zillions of cherry tomatoes from plants that grow to a length of ten feet on the west side of a house. They don't get any direct sunlight at all until 1pm. Done this for a decade.

Agree with you both. I have one spot under a live oak that I use for the "where the heck am I going to put another tomato?" problem I always have. Dappled shade all day, no direct sun other than sunrise and sunset, but usually by the end of the season it's growing up through the tree and producing fairly well - which is the other plus to growing a tomato there, I don't have to stake or cage at all, it just grows up the tree. Picking tomatoes while climbing a tree is a little more difficult, though.

I have said this many times and keep saying it : Direct sun is not the only source of light that most plants ( including tomatoes ) can utilize. This is especially more true when the temperatures are high and daylight hours are long.

Sey

daninthedirt: I agree about the misleading phrasing. The way it's usually explained, it seems like your plants will die a horrible death if they don't get seven hours of sunlight. In fact, while you got 40 cherry tomatoes, more sunlight might have gotten you 60. Who cares, unless maybe you're selling them to try to pay the rent. I get zillions of cherry tomatoes from plants that grow to a length of ten feet on the west side of a house. They don't get any direct sunlight at all until 1pm. Done this for a decade.

I would point out that Lady Luv got 40 cherry tomatoes total from 3 plants. Sweet million is the kind of variety that should pump out hundred of tomatoes per plant, i.e., known for excellent productivity in adequate conditions most of the time. I pick 40 cherry tomatoes every 2 days from one cherry tomato plant and 40 cherry tomatoes every 4 days from another. Neither are hybrid cherries known for great production. I would expect more robust production with more sun, but I put my cherry plants there because I know my larger tomatoes wouldn't do nearly as well there.

I do agree that most advice defaults to try to provide for optimal production and also is heavily slanted toward beefsteak types. But I don't know anyone that would claim that tomatoes, especially cherry tomatoes, will die or refuse to produce ANY fruit in lower-light-than-optimal conditions. In fact, I often see people advising those with sunlight issues in their gardens to grow cherry tomatoes precisely because they seem to need less sun to produce a non-disappointing amount of tomatoes. I think if one has the impression that people are saying you can't grow anything in less than optimal conditions, one might not be hearing the advice correctly or may be getting advice from a not very experienced gardener.

And I also agree that, if getting a handful of cherry tomatoes is an acceptable outcome, and the fun of growing them is reward enough, there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. The same with other practices such as fertilizer, fungicide, pesticide, etc. All of it boils down to being informed enough to have accurate expectations and then accepting the effort vs. outcome ratio. But I think it should be a natural expectation that people will try to direct newbies to optimal practices where possible--not because they're trying to be exclusive or snobby but because they want newbies to get good results.

Tiny Tim is more tolerant of low light than any other tomato I have ever grown. Put it in a 4 gallon pot and it will grow about 2 feet tall and bushy. Not the best taste, but wonderful production. Fine in a salad. Timmy will tolerate any kind of abuse.

Until this year when I spent a fortune trimming trees in back, I grew in pots in my driveway -- 2 hrs of sun a day. Everything took longer than their days-to-maturity. The wonderful 80-day beefsteaks did not have enough time to grow. I had some success with Early Girl and a variety of cherries. The OP cherries (Black Cherry, Isis Candy, Rosalita, Snow White) have DTM that are too long for the 2-hrs of sun- very little fruit before frost. Supersweet 100 and Jelly Bean always produced well given the situation. Early Girl did surprisingly well. It is a very tolerant cultivar.

Your sister should only try tomatoes with DTM of 60 or less. One big failure was Golden Nugget, which has a short DTM. It never produced a fruit.

I can only eat yellow or orange tomatoes.

Also, my balcony is very small, partially shaded, and faces east.

So I need dwarf yellow cherry tomatoes that tolerate some shade.

I have some Golden Nuggets growing right now, but they are not productive at all.

Also, they taste awful.

Suggestion for next summer, anyone?

In pots on my patio 5 hours partial sun LA area, Indigo Ruby did the best.

Patio Tom was ok but no taste. Early Girl did ok, not great.

Cherokee-nada.

Momotaro-nada.

Yellow Brandywine nada.

Juliet, Carmelo, few tomatoes but meh taste.

YMMV, of course.

This year I'll try some of these, which include some yellow varieties.

https://www.tomatobible.com/shade-tolerant-tomato-varieties/

https://www.weekand.com/home-garden/article/tomato-plants-require-less-sun-18047325.php

Tomatoes are perennial here.

@tarolli2011

I've never tried it in a container, but I thought Black Cherry tasted better in the shade. It had nice texture, and bigger fruit, too. It got eastern sun (no south or western sun). In the shade, it was less acidic, less candy-like and more fruit-like.

@Alanna Gordon If it were me, I'd probably try a semi-determinate orange or yellow paste tomato. Orange paste tomatoes are supposed to taste pretty good (haven't tasted them myself, yet).