Agree. My cherries do great with 4-5 hours of sun. Mixed success with large tomatoes with this amount of sun. 4-5 hours of sun means about 1/2 full sun. If you dapples are large, it might work.

Tomatoes will flower continuously through the summer. What they won't do when it gets hot is pollinate. As in, flowers, but no fruit. Shade won't affect that. We're talking about the AIR temperature, which is the same in the shade and the sun. So planting in the shade won't help pollination in the heat.

That said, the plants themselves can get scalded by too much sun, so a little protection from sunlight in the worst heat can help survival of the plant.

I grew 10 different beefsteak varieties last season. I have nowhere on the property that gets more than 5-6 hours of sunlight. I grew some delicious tomatoes under a 50 foot tall Norway Spruce. There was maybe 10 foot before any green branches at the bottom of the tree and the tomatoes were slightly north of the tree.

If you want to grow any variety of tomato I say go for it. There's no penalty for gardening mistakes. My best tasting, most aromatic, and most prolific grower was Dester. My first tomato two years in a row was Mortgage Lifter. And I also grew Pink Brandywine which is considered the best tasting tomato. All of those I mentioned are beefsteaks.

By the way I used to stop at market stands on the White Horse Pike and the Black Horse Pike in New Jersey 40 or more years ago. They always had some delicious beefsteaks in the summer. I once went back behind the stand. He was growing tomatoes on 6 foot centers with 6 foot between rows.

The advice from Texas above, while interesting, will not apply to you in NJ!

What advice from Texas were you referring to? Tomatoes won't fruit in 90+F temperatures anywhere. They don't care what state they're in.

Well I guess tomatoes aren't an option for people with backyards full of large trees then... But does it really make a difference if tomatoes get 4 hours of direct sun as opposed to 6 hours? Most suburban homes can't provide 'full sun' as in 6+ hours to any plants in their yard due to the amount of infastructure, large native trees and stuff. Unless you are very rich and own an acre of a yard which is not an option for me. All I can say is sigh, my options are very limited. And I don't like cherry tomatoes so thats not an option either.

I'd give it a try. You probably won't get a big harvest, but you'll probably get some.

You could grow them in pots and move them around until you find their preferred sun exposure.

I’ve thought about growing in pots too but I heard that tomatoes(or any veggies/fruits in general) don’t taste as good in potting soil as opposed to real soil. Is that true?

No, it's not!! Many people grow tomatoes in containers - on balconies and roof top gardens or as floral suggested, to move around the garden to maximize sun availablity and/or reflected heat. And they taste perfectly fine!!

I'd also question your assumption that an average sized suburban garden will never receive more than 6 hours of sun!! Of course it depends on what else is planted and how big it may be or how much of the property the footprint of the house or any out buildings may consume but to say you need acreage to get that much sunlight is much too broad a generalization to be even remotely accurate!! Many folks with smaller suburban properties get all the sun they can handle!

And how can you not like cherry tomatoes? Super easy to grow, hugely prolific and they taste like tomato candy! These are the only tomatoes I grow.....and I grow my tomatoes only in containers.

So the differences in soil nutrients won't affect fruit taste? Since regular soil is packed full of various nutrients, something that a potting mix does not have unless you fertilize but doubt it will still be as nutritious as regular soil. If not I guess I will give container tomatoes a try.

It really depends on the town. My town has a lot of forests and houses at the same time so most yards in our neighborhood don't get direct 6+ hours of sun. Except for the people who have really big yards. I'm seriously debating on growing perennials only part sun/shade or full sun tolerators who can also take shade so I don't have to worry about my home buying process in the future and not cause so much frustration on the real estate agent.

I like to eat cherry tomatoes but I don't like to grow them.. I grew them from seed this past year and they barely grew and most of the fruits were eaten by insects before I even got to harvest them..

Studies of the effect of tomato taste on nutrient availability are somewhat mixed. K and P help acids and sugars, but some studies looking at generic taste find that excess N and K make it poorer. Really kinda depends on what you consider to be optimal taste.

Regular soil is certainly not necessarily packed full of nutrients. Who's doing that packing? Many soils are seriously deficient in nutrient content. Most tomato growers fertilize pots as well as regular soil.

Pest and disease certainly aren't worse for cherry tomatoes, and I've always considered cherries to be somewhat easier to grow. If you had problems growing them in regular soil, you might get your soil tested. Your nutrient levels may be off.

It is the cherry tomatoes that always reseed and come back hell or high water (make that hell AND high water for this year). They are so prolific that I end up preserving them, including a final huge harvest of greens. Thanks .to this discussion I may do some tomatoes in pots myself this year.. But wouldn't a determinate variety be a better choice?

While I wouldn't believe that any soil is better than a potting medium, I can't accept that either don't matter. That would make me feel foolish for searching out the cans of authentic San Marzanos!

Haha, I'm not a cherry tomato lover, either! It's not so much the flavor, though most are far too sweet for me, but the typically thick outer rind that I find off-putting. I always pull them out of a restaurant salad. I do grow a plant in my garden, though, as my neighbors really like to eat them right off the plant....they're children who are welcome to raid my garden.

My garden is in the hot Southern sun all day, and the soil is a well-drained red clay. I spray a couple of layers of a white kaolin clay product called Surround on my tomatoes, summer squashes, and beans. It reflects sunlight cools the plant tissue, prevents wilting, heat stress, and sun scald. Surround also deters many insect pests.

I've been mentioning this product for many years as a simple, organic tool to increase production and quality of some of our garden plants.

I far prefer to grow my veggies in the ground. In my experience, they are more productive and flavorful, but also much more robust.

I want to grow the 'Momotaro' Japanese tomatoes so I want it to be more sweeter than anything. But I think I know what it is now. If I'm correct I think its the foliage and the plant parts itself that are superior in taste by growing directly in the ground but it won't really affect the taste of the fruits produced by the plant?

Momotaro!! Thank you, Heruga, for sending me back to my Kitazawa Seed catalogue to look them up. They must be the sublime tomatoes I ate like apples in Japan. The closest commercial tomato I find to to it in my local supermarkets are the Camparis, which became available about ten years ago. They were a great improvement on the beautiful but bland vine grown clusters that were then the best available. Anyway, I see Momotaro's are also very early - only 60 days. SO, I will order a pack of seeds and do an experiment for us. Some in a pot of media and some in the ground, right next to each other so all other factors will be (nearly) identical. Stay tuned for a blind taste test in August. I am looking forward to it:)

Incidentally, the first tomatoes I grew here about five years ago were from a pack of Japanese cherry tomato seeds. Next time I'm digging in my old seed folder I'll find the name. They too were delicious (thin skinned and juciy) so consider them. I also have reseeding Japanese mini, really micro, tomatoes that are like tiny grapes. They too are delicious. Did you all know that Sungold is a Japanese introduction?

I successfully grew cherries in 5 hours of sun. It was Sweet 100. No issues. Grew a 10 foot vine.

I also have limited sun. Last year, I grew beef steaks in the sunny spot. This time, I decided that I would go back to cherries and use the sunny spot for brussel sprouts and sweet peppers. I don't have any worries. :)

Supersweet 100 hybrid is one of the three cherry tomatoes offered by Kitazawa..

I get my momotaros tomatoes (to eat) from mitsuwa supermarket as it is only half an hour away from me. I also order regularly from Kitazawa seed. They are great.. I grew some Japanese melons and watermelons and they were delicious.

Wow I didn’t know sungold was Japanese. Interesting. You would expect a Japanese name of cultivar to it lol. Are you from Japan as well?

Heruga...who cares what the foliage tastes like?? Of course I am talking about the juicy tomatoes themselves.

Sungolds have a very thin skin. And are deliciously sweet. By far my favorite snacking tomato!!

I have also grown Momotaros, one of the few varieties that do really well in the PNW's cool summers because of the short time to harvest (any of the cherries will do well here as well). Not huge fruit so I wouldn't exactly qualify them as a slicing variety. But very tasty and sweet........grown in a container :-)

Being a single person, I never bother wth seeds - don't need 20 plants of any single variety :-) So I buy gallon sized starts in late spring ready to set out. Fortunately the owner of my nursery is a bit of a tomato connoisseur and grows a couple of dozen varieties for retail sale, mostly those that do well in our tricky tomato growing climate.

I’m just saying any veggie foliage in general, not tomatoes.

Is growing sungold more or less maintenance than Momotaros? I definitely want to go for the less maintenance one as I have a bunch of other fruits and veggies I grow. i like to grow from seeds mainly because of that extremely rewarding feeling that you get when you first harvest and taste the crop from that you started from scratch. I don’t have a super big yard dedicated for annual veggies and fruits either so I don’t use a whole lot of seed from the packet. Thankfully melon and watermelon, and cucumber seeds last a very long time so I don’t have to worry about using them up all at once.

So tomatoes like it hot humid climates? And harvest is more abundant in those climates ? Huh, I guess thats one thing nj climate shows an advantage of

Hi Heruga!

I would say that Sungold is very easy.

Sungold was the first tomato I ever grew. I put it in clay soil, in a new subdivision, which meant the soil was not very fertile, and likely quite compacted from construction machines running over it.

Still, I had bountiful harvests of little orange fruits all summer long with no disease. I'm ninety percent sure I didn't water it enough and I still got good results.

Tomatoes have a range, like all vegetables. Once you get into the 90s, you'll see that flowers drop off and it stops putting out new growth. But when the temperature drops, you'll see it come back into production again. I would say the ideal temperature for tomatoes is somewhere between 80 and 85 degrees. So pretty hot.

"So tomatoes like it hot humid climates?"

Tomatoes are native to a warm climate but there is a limit on heat tolerance. As noted previously, if temps are too high, they will halt any fruit production. And high humidity will just foster all the myriad fungal diseases tomatoes are prone to. What will maximize production is an extended period of adequately warm but not hot weather, as much sun as possible and low humidity. That's why most of the US commercial crop comes from California and Florida - year round production in CA: winter only production in FL.

I have never had any different mantenance concerns re: tomato type or variety. They all need attention to staking (all indeterminate varieties) and frequent watering and fertilization. And shifting my containers as necessary to maximize sun exposure. Disease issues have not been a problem with growing only a few different varieties and each plant in its own container - IMO, container grown plants experience very few disease problems.

"If I'm correct I think its the foliage and the plant parts itself that are superior in taste by growing directly in the ground ...". No, where in the world do you come up with that? You really don't like containers, do you?