Growing Tomatoes with no Sun

[BeginerLuck]

Hi all,

Hope your everybody garden is good .

I'm growing the tomatoes for the first time on my life, I started this season to plant them on my garden, but day to day I notice that on that place there is no sunlight.

I'm going to ask and please give me some advise, if you have experiences about growing tomatoes. These are the photos of my garden

they are there since 10April 2015

they are there since 09 May 2015


Temperatures on my city are around 20-27 at day, at night 13-17 but on my place there are no direct sunlight. The tree of the tomatoes is growing in good condition but no flowers yet

[PaulF]

You are in a difficult situation. Tomatoes need at least six hours of direct sunlight to do well. Indirect or dappled sunlight is enough to keep the plants alive but they will be terribly stunted and likely not to produce much fruit. The plants will be using most of their energy just to grow foliage and root systems. Reproduction (flowers and then fruits) may possibly come later in the season. You need to find another place to grow tomatoes; they are not a shade loving plant. Sorry to send you bad news.

[rainbowgardener]

Yup! I have tried growing tomatoes in somewhat shady conditions (but they still got more hours of direct sun than yours). In my situation of some, but not enough, hours of direct sun, the plants grew, but hardly made any fruit.

Tomatoes can be grown in (large) containers. Do you have anywhere in sun where you could put a container or two of tomato plants? If so you could dig a couple of yours up and put them one per pot in the containers.

[applestar]

I agree with everything that's been said.

...but... There might be a small chance if direct sunlight reaches those white-ish walls for any amount of time. If so, you mybe able to provide the tomatoes with reflected sunlight light if you whitewash the walls to bright white color or if you put up reflective material -- mirrors, metal sheeting or foil, mylar (such as emergency blanket).

It's also important to fertilize them and mulch around them with 2-3 inches of available mulch material. This year, I'm using clean unadulterated wood shavings from a local furniture shop. In the past, I've used cut weeds and grass, dried leaves, paper, straw, etc.

[GardeningCook]

Unfortunately, while some vegetables (greens mostly), can survive & produce with minimal direct sun, tomatoes are not one of them.

[Peter1142]

I have tomatoes in 3-4 hours sun right now and they have 15-20 medium-sized fruit per plant on them right now. Last year I had 3 cherries in the same sun situation and they produced far more than I could eat. There have been discussions about this on other forums recently and there are many similar experiences.

Zero direct sun though seems unlikely to be successful.

[BeginerLuck]

Update:

I transplant a tomatoes with flower on my garden days ago and now he start to put the fruits. I will inform for more update and these days I will add a camera on my garden to monitor the situation how hours of sunlight I have on what are the results.

Thank you for your advise next season I'm going to grow a garden with tomatoes in 20m2. This season I don't want to fail cuz I made 80 peaces of tomatoes from the seeds so I gave them good effort haha