Greetings from Zone 6! This year is the first year i have lived in a house, rather than an apartment, and so i thought I'd try my hand at gardening.
I'm growing a few varieties of tomato - Big Beef, Brandywine, Early Girl.....
Anyway, these are all planted in 1 long, narrow bed along the side of my house. This bed gets morning sun, but a large tree blocks some of the light, so that as one travels along the row, the plants get progressively less sun. As you might anticipate, my plants are showing a dose-resposne in growth - the ones on the sunnier side are thriving - the big beef on this end are up to 5 feet, and flowering/fruiting heavily. The plants on the least sunny end are somewhat stunted looking
- a foot or 2 in hight, but they are showing some flowers.
My question is: will the smaller plants eventually bear much fruit? Are the just lagging behind, and developing more slowly than their sunny counterparts, or will they stay small and produce smaller yields?
they will stay smaller, produce later, and yield less. It is probably not a great situation for tomatoes. Try greens next time, or have tomatoes on the sunny side and greens on the other.
Generally, the answer is that they will stay smaller and bear less fruit. However, they may improve if they get more light as the summer progresses and the relative position of the sun changes so that they getless shade. They may also bear fruit for a longer season than the larger plants, even if the fruit is smaller - something Mother Nature seems to do to compensate for the poorer conditions. You might want to see if you can prune the tree to lessen the shade.
Here in NJ, I've got tomatoes setting fruit for almost three weeks. Come around August, I'm going to be the Queen of the Frozen 'Maters...
We are both in the same boat or the same zone. There are so many factors going into size and the first is, when did you plant and where did you get the plants from? I planted the first week of June and I got my plants from Hicks (Westbury) and Home Depot. Those first plants are huge, almost 8ft for the three "award winning" ones. The real large ones only have a few tomatoes. I suspect they'll be very productive but later.
What's interesting is that most of these are on the top of the slope on the side of my house. We have sand under the soil so I think the water drains down to the plants at the bottom of the slope. They are not doing is well.
My sun problem is the same as yours but they seem to be getting sun at least six hours.
Then I planted a second batch of plum tomatoes about 2 weeks later and got all those from Hicks. They are more towards the bottom of the slope. Everything I got for that later planting is smaller and more than 2 weeks smaller. One plant just dried up (or maybe drowned) and died.
Did you fertilize? Do you make sure the bottom of the plant, near the roots is covered with enough soil? How do you water? Who knows, it could just be the plants you bought.
I bought cukes from Home Depot and most of them didn't do well. Then I got some from Hicks, later on and they are doing great. We have big Kirbys, at least 12 and many more coming, so far and the long Burpless, which will be ready very soon.
I bought lettuce and cabbage and they are al full of holes. I have eggplants where I am just starting to see the black now, lots of basil, red onions, parsley (which might have given me indigestion) and peppers. The peppers are in the lower wet zone and they looked burnt out, as did my friend's about 10 miles east. She planted 2 weeks before we did and she said hers are coming back, so I am hoping. I also have zuchinni, two plants have zuchinnis (about 4 -5 inches) and the third has nothing.
There are so many things that can cause bad results, most of all water, sun and the kinds of plants you buy.
The smaller plants are in fact doing well - the fruit they have set is plentiful, but is generally smaller then that on the bigger, more sun-exposed plants. I have noticed that the smaller plants have many more flowers than the larger plants, so, if fruit continues to set, I'll hopefully have a long harvesting season this year.
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