by the mid of july my tomatoes were pretty much gone under due to blight and stress and old age but on my mail rt. there were several folks that had tomatoes planted on the north side of building so that they were in partial shade most all day long. some were cherry and some were larger but none were beefsteak type they seemed to thrive right on into sept and oct.. anyone else noticed this or had experience w/ it?
i know that since i have planted my peppers in afternoon shade they do a lot better but have read that tomatoes need full sun?

Maybe it is because of the seering Texas summer heat. Might be worth a try. I keep my tomatoes in half barrels, so maybe I will move them in late June. Thanks for the idea!

We had our tomatoes in a full sun (Texas sun!) location last year, had to water them quite a bit because we didn't have quite enough mulch on them, but they did ok.

I plan to cut ours back this year -- sometime in July -- so they can get some new growth and we'll hopefully get a fall crop, too.

One thing to consider is not watering them from above. Put a soaker hose on your tomatoes instead.

Happy gardening!

It is well known that in June and July most tomato production stops. At that time you can trim them back, if they still look good and healthy or you can take them out and plant new transplants and have a fall crop until the first freeze.

these folks never trimmed their plants back. or replanted. i need to find out what variety they planted.

A friend of mine says he drapes a cloth over his tomato plants in the heat of summer. He gets fruit all summer. I'm going to try some sort of shade this year to see if I can get better production.

Tomatoes can and will go all summer long but it depends on lots of factors. They are susceptible to fungal diseases so a humid or wet spring and summer could cause them to die out, or look bad, earlier. A super hot and dry summer can bring in problem of its own. It's not that they can produce, usually factors in our weather have brought on things that make us want to rip them out before then. I had several seasons of picking the last tomato the night before our first hard freeze in November a few years back.