Shade Tolerant Tomato Varieties: 28 varieties, 7 tips and motivation for growing in the shade

Book excerpt: I've got a clear and intense memory from a couple of decades ago: I am about 6 years old, back in Transylvania, in the village of my grandparents. On a sunny morning, I am seeking ways to the backyard where they had an apiary, and they were also growing all sorts of vegetables and fruits. In this memory I finally find my path, I tear off a huge ripen tomato, and my nearly infinite joyride starts as I push my face into it. It smells so delicious as nothing else; I feel like in paradise and I chew that delicious thing until I finish. Without a thought, then I am already craving the next one. But a couple of minutes later, the idyllic moment dissipates as the bees begin to wake up and start their daily routine. The situation is getting hotter and hotter: thousands of little flying animals want to catch just me, so I realize it's time to go back to my grandparents' house. Probably this short, dream-like memory is my first anchor to tomatoes! The summer vibes, the taste and the smell of that tomato, and the idea of how I secretly embraced it, all led me to the recognition that I want to revive that moment. I must admit that the straightest way to do that is to plant and grow tomatoes in whatever circumstances. Now I am in the present again, and it happened; for years repeatedly, and I do it with greater and greater success and joy. By the way, did you know that in Hungarian, we call the tomato and paradise with the same exact word: paradicsom (IPA: /ˈpɒrɒditʃom/). What a coincidence, and how well they fit! In fact, the Hungarian word tomato is abbreviated from the phrase "apple of the paradise ". The plant's "apple" name is still preserved by its Italian name (pomodoro, i.e. "golden apple"). Tomato in Spanish is tomate, a word of Aztec origin: the Spanish conquistadors abbreviated the original Aztec name xitomatl of the fruit brought from America. This word then entered many European languages: for example French and German tomate, English tomato. The circumstances of the present? They are great, but not so great as they were at that time: in contrast to the huge fields of the Transylvanian countryside, we live now next to Budapest, the capital of Hungary. This area is more densely populated, and our garden is tinier and shadier. However, I figured out how to grow tomatoes in this new environment and I also found the types of tomatoes that are OK with the shadows. And this is the reason I wrote this little book... to motivate you by sharing my experiences and maybe providing a bit of guidance. To show you that even in not the most optimal parameters, tomatoes can be grown. My goal is not to cover all the aspects of tomato growing, so many tried that already and there is great literature, and I will recommend some of the bests of that at the end of this book. The goal of this book is: - to motivate you to grow tomatoes in a suboptimal (shady) environment, - to provide hacks to grow tomatoes in shady and little places, and - to recommend the best tomatoes to grow in shade. This book is definitely for tomato lovers who do not have the best environment, but still want to try tomato growing and want to have success (in the shadows)!