Terrible locations, but the only options - tips and tricks, please!

Wow!
Thank you, @Melody Mc. !

All great info!
I love the sound of soil warming cables! I'll have to look into that.

My brother-in-law grows toms and peppers in 5 gallon buckets. The peppers do great but the toms aren't very happy. If I decide to grow peppers, I'll do that.
I'll remember to open the tent for the toms, and most likely take it down in the mid-summer months. Thanks for the tip and reminder. The different cloths sound good. I've been wanting to try them, but they are always sold out every time I look for them.
I was also told by a farmer that if I plan to direct sow tomatoes, I should plant just cherry and grape tomatoes, as our season is too short to direct sow anything larger and get a good harvest from it.

 

I can't imagine the option to direct sow tomotoes.... that's wonderful!

Your farmer neighbour's experience offers very sound advice and is a good local resource for you. Cherry tomatoes are so rewarding.

I'm not sure about the direct sowing success as I've never done that. ( I must start al of my tomatoes 10 weeks before transplant, then they go into a raised bed cold frame/greenhouse, with a heated soil cable and above heat lamps for the first few weeks of cool nights. Then if I'm lucky...tomatoes hahahaha. My issue is getting them to ripen before fall. )

I have to grow primarily short season tomatoes, which mean a bush determinate variety. There are a few in particular that may interest you/help your growing situation.

I agree with the buckets and tomatoes. Any full size tomatoes I've grown in pots/planters must have 18" to grow. They have a quite spanning root system. With the exception of a little beauty cherry tomato called a "Red Robin". It is a dwarf ( 18 inches tall), and good in a 2 -4 gallon pot. ( I use 2). It is not like your typical dwarf tomato, in that it gets laden with cherry size tomatoes. (However, it is determinate and they all set fruit at once.) I like that I can move them about and pack them to shelter or full sun without any back injury or inconvenience. And, because the pot is small, they can be planted before any planting in the garden is an option.

There is one in particular tomato that may interest you, called a "Sub Arctic Plenty". It was specifically designed for Canadian prairie growing seasons. It is raved to be one of the earliest tomatoes around, is a good producer of medium/small fruit. The best part is that it is bred to be able to set fruit in even in cool soil/cold temperatures. It would need an 18" planter or raised bed and gets about 3 feet tall.

My favourtie however is the Early Girl Bush. Because it is a bush variety, it produces and sets fruit much earlier than other tomatoes, (even it's big sister Early Girl). Some folks that live here along the lake can actually get fruit by planting transplants next to their south facing house, which is pretty much unheard of here. And the fruit is larger. It is a little fussier about soil temps than the Subarctic Plenty though. It grows about three feet high and is good in a 18" planter or raised bed, with lots of fruit.

Hope that helps. Happy planning and growing!

 

Thank you for the info.
Yes, I learned that I can direct sow tomatoes by the volunteers I got one year. They grew faster and were much hardier than the ones I started indoors. Ever since, I have direct sown and/or thinned my volunteers.
When I had room to start my plants indoors, I noticed that they would only get up to 2 sets of true leaves and grow to about 2 inches tall and then stop. They would stunt and stay like that for a couple of months. I tried everything I could think of to get past that plateau. It was so irritating. My volunteers didn't do that, so that was when I gave up on starting seeds indoors; that and I had to repurpose the space I used for my garden work and supplies.
My garden is organic and I am using heirloom seeds from a farm with a comparable climate. I've been buying different tomato seeds every year, trying to find ones that will work here. Our weather is so changeable, it is difficult to know what to use. Our summer daytime temps can vary anywhere between the 70s up to 110s. The air can be dry but is most often humid. We never know what to expect. If we get a hot summer, I can get plenty of beefsteak and plum tomatoes, but if we have a cooler or changeable summer (which has been more common lately), we can only get cherry or grape tomatoes, maybe one or two plum tomatoes and a bunch of green marbles to throw away. Last year I planted Mountain Princess tomatoes and two other short season tomatoes but we had such a bad growing season, I didn't get anything. So, the challenges of the variable weather, the garden locations (north and east sides of the house) and the yard terrain are all very difficult challenges. We plan to move, but the timing is a problem.