There are a couple of previous discussions here about trying to do it and all the costs and problems associated with doing it but the majority of the discussions on it are over on the Growing Under Lights forum here. I linked a number of them for you below.

Basically you will need some sort of full spectrum, high intensity light system to get them to bloom and fans for air circulation or hand pollination to set fruit. Can end up being some expensive tomatoes.

Dave

Here is a link that might be useful: Growing Under Lights - Tomatoes

I thought it might not be that great an idea. I don't even know where I would put them. I think I'll stick with the normal outdoor growing for now. I saw them being grown on an earthtainer web site, in something called an Inntainer. I got curious.

My indoor tomatoes are flowering but not setting fruit.
I've tried shaking them gently but it doesn't work. I've tried mucking around with a small brush but the pollen doesn't budge from the flower. How do you hand pollinate them?

You dont need to hand pollinate tomato. Slight breeze, a light tap .. on the branch should be enough.
Be patient ! tomato fruit forms and grows very slowly. But if the buds are dropping, then it is a different matter.

Thanks Seysonn. After seeing how quickly passionfruit form after hand pollination, I suppose I've come to expect similar results in tomatoes. Also, this is the first time I've grown tomatoes indoors, so I really don't know the rules.

I have grown tomatoes over the winter in Zone 7. We get enough warm sunny days that I am able to put them outside for a few hours during the day, but I always bring them inside in the late afternoon.

The best ones were Red Robin and Yellow Canary, grown in small containers that fitted on the windowsill. They are sturdy little plants that produce lots of cherry tomatoes.

I also grew an Early Girl, a Stupice and a Black Krim in 3 gallon pots over the years. It was a lot of work for not much in return, but I suspect that the size of the pot AND my soil were to blame for the tiny harvest.

Linda

I will be growing Minibel and Mohamed and will start shortly. Those are mini dwarf and able to grow in 4¨ containers. I am planning to put pots inside of large plastic container and use some clip on lights. We will see.

Another consideration is the plant size.
If I were going to do it, I would select DWARFS or DETERMINANTS. Never an Indeterminant variety. They can go through the rough of your house.LOL

I grew tomatoes indoors one year. I mean I often start tomatoes in the spring in a room with a lot of windows, but one year I decided to take tomatoes right through the winter.

I chose indeterminate tomatoes which I grew from seed. For varieties I used everything from cherry tomatoes through medium sized, and into large beefsteak tomatoes, too. Always with varieties that I knew I liked. I got large buckets of dirt, 2 gallons to 4 gallons PER TOMATO PLANT (altogether I had 20 of them). I filled these buckets with garden soil from my garden. In mid summer I planted a new young tomato plant into each of them, along with a nice tomato tower. When fall came and temps started to drop, I moved them inside.

I put them in my unfinished basement. Concrete floors, temperatures in the lower 70s, all winter, no natural light. I bought cheap fluorescent shoplights and literally covered the ceiling with them, and hung them down on chains until they sat just a few feet above the tomatoes. I got a rotary fan that moved back and forth and put it on a timer, and the shoplights on a second timer. The shoplights were on about 15 to 18 hours a day and the fan ran for an hour, back and forth accross all the plants for an hour, twice a day. The fan was partly for pollination and partly to help try to keep my plants strong.

Each tomato bucket sat in a water catching receptacle and I checked all my tomatoes every day and watered them by hand when appropriate. They were not overwatered and they were not allowed to dry out excessively.

What were the results?

First, there was more mess than I would have expected. Tomato plants shed leaves and things we often aren't aware of, and I'm sure this was aggravated by being indoors. Not a horrible mess, but not as clean as I thought it was going to be.

Second, I got tomatoes from all of my plants, right through the winter, but most of the production was an initial burst from tomatoes that had been pollinated and started growing when outdoors. Those ones finished growing and, despite my efforts, the plants produced decreased flowers and decreased tomatoes after that. All of them kept growing a few tomatoes, but they were slow to grow and not very numerous.

Third, and this really probably should not have been a surprise to me, the taste of the tomatoes was generally quite mediocre. Plants from varieties that were absolutely delicious in my garden were just somewhat better than store bought in my basement grown plants. THAT was the biggest failing from my experiment and was the main reason I never went to that much effort to try to grow them again.

ALL of my tomato plants survived the winter, though some were a bit scraggly by the end. I took them out in late spring and planted them in the ground and continued to get tomatoes all summer long. Then I let them die in the winter and that was it.

Altogether, I considered it to be a failed experiment because of the fairly 'average' taste. I'm sure they would have done better if they had been exposed to more natural light and more natural conditions. A large greenhouse would have been nice, but, though I have experimented with small greenhouses, I never had that much success with those, either.

In the end, I just never felt it was worth repeating all the work. Hopefully others have had better experiences.

By the way, for pollination, I used the fans, as I have mentioned above, but a trick that many greenhouses use is to get one of those small, cheap, vibrating, battery operated toothbrushes and just run it gently over the flowers from one flower to the next, and use it on all your plants. Seems to work very well.

I would NOT use the "Tomato Blossom Set" sprays, since they tend to produce inferior tasting tomatoes with very few seeds and fairly soft, mealy flesh.

Can be done with good lighting and a lot of attention.

Raybo

If you have southern light exposure though glass deck doors and a bunch of daylight/growlight fluorescents you can arrange around them you can do it. I got some ripe bell peppers that way once.

But unless you are talking about container-grown tomatoes you are just carrying inside (and I spent 5 years growing main season tomatoes in 5 gallon buckets on an apartment balconies, which was tricky enough in itself) that's a LOT of work.

Mature tomatoes don't like being dug up. The transplant shock is severe, they wont fruit for at least a month (two?) until they recover, and you might even have to artificially pollinate the flowers.

It sure would be interesting to learn if that worked though!

I agree that a room with a southern exposure, lots of window space and lots of light would be ideal. PLUS as many fluorescent lights as you can cram around them.

BUT, try to get the brightest standard fluorescent lights that you can, and DON'T waste your time on Gro-Lux type lights. Those "Plant Lights" advertise that they emit light in exactly the frequency (color) ranges that are most beneficial for plants. However, my understanding is that they do this simply by filtering out the other colors and frequencies WITHOUT changing those colors and frequencies into the most desired frequencies.

The result is that what you actually get is LESS light and dimmer light overall, and if it is ALL of the right frequencies, that is of NO extra benefit. Because the standard lights also give you the EXACT SAME FREQUENCIES, and possibly in greater amounts, since there is no filtering within the light tube. The most desirable frequencies are just mixed in with all the other frequencies (making WHITE LIGHT). AND, if all the other frequencies are LESS desirable, they are IN NO WAY HARMFUL OR NEGATIVE and though the extra light is LESS desirable, it is STILL desirable and helpful. So standard, bright, white light is the best.

Am I making this clear or making a mess out of the explanation?

Another question is, "How many hours of light and how many hours of darkness do tomato plants need?" And I'm not sure of the answer for that.

Though tomatoes are C3 plants, they apparently do need SOME period of darkness to be healthy. I have seen pictures of tomato plants that were grown under 24 hours of light with no darkness and they weren't healthy. BUT, I don't know the complete answer to that one.

If you plan to grow tomatoes under artificial lights, it would be good to research the optimal period of light and darkness.

It doesn't have to be labor intensive. I grow hot peppers and determinate tomatoes from fall until I begin getting fruit from my summer garden. A table, gallon jugs with the tops cut off and a south facing window. I pollinate with a finger tip. They do get light when the overhead light is on in the room but that is inconsequential. If there was much cost or effort involved I wouldn't bother. For support I've used the same wooden rods that were left over from a woodworking project for years. Some die before the end of the indoor growing season but never without providing some fruit first.