It’s been a good tomato season this year, and reports are that tomatoes are replacing the venerable zucchini overload when it comes to giving produce away. But as we get into the end of September, and the nighttime temperatures start dropping below 55 degrees, tomatoes won’t set any more fruit and it’s time to get what’s still on the plants ripe before the first frost.
The first thing you can do is top your tomato plants especially the indeterminate varieties that just keep growing taller. This signals to the plant the growing is done for the year and it’s time to shift into ripening fruit. This is not so much of a challenge for determinate varieties as they grow to a certain height and then produce their crop all at once. Find the stem just above the tallest flower on the plant and cut the stem just above it.
Remove any small green fruit that doesn’t stand a chance of getting ripe to transfer the energy to other fruits. Under good conditions, it takes about three weeks to ripen a tomato, and our warm weather is disappearing.
Another trick to ripening fruit is to induce stress on the plants by slowly reducing your watering. By slowly and evenly reducing their water, the plants are less likely to crack or develop blossom end rot that is caused by wild swings in watering.
Another way of stressing your plants is to cut their roots back. Insert a shovel six to eight inches deep and about a foot from the main stem and work your way around the plant. By severing the roots, you reduce the plant’s ability to take up water which induces stress to the plant. Using these two methods may result in smaller tomatoes but it will increase the sugar content of the fruit. Stressing the plants should be done within about three weeks ahead of our first frost date – which is now.
If a sneaker frost is in the forecast, tomatoes can be ripened indoors in several ways. Pick all the fruits that are at least yellow and lay them out in newspaper or cardboard, so they aren’t touching in a spare space away from the sun. Check them regularly for ripe ones and ones that are going bad. It may take a couple of weeks for them to ripen but their flavor will still be good. If you have just a few, they can be left on the counter.
Interestingly, putting half-ripe tomatoes in a bag or closed box with a couple of apples will speed up ripening. Apples emit ethylene gas which speeds ripening. In the produce industry ethylene gas is used to ripen many fruits before they go on store shelves.
Lastly is the messy way. Whole plants can be pulled up and hung in a garage or shed to ripen. If the area is protected from frost, they can be left for several weeks. You might eat the last one with Thanksgiving dinner.
Comments are closed.