October 2, 2014

Good morning, it is sad to see another summer veggie season wind down. Especially after getting your tomato plants to become loaded with tons of green fruit. You keep wondering if they will ever ripen. Now that we are getting into shorter days and cooler nights along with jack frost ever so rapidly approaching, what to do with all those green toms.

First stop watering, we want to water stress the plants. You need to hold back on the water. The next thing is to go in and prune off a lot of foliage so that more sun gets into ripen the fruit. Don't forget it is the leaves that produce the sugars in your toms so don't go crazy with the clippers. I have found that after the first freeze there can be up to 2 weeks before a real doozy of a freeze hits. Have blankets or quilts ready as you watch for these approaching storms and make sure your toms are covered to the ground and the covers weighted down so that they do not get blown off.

Say you are done with covering, go ahead and pick all the toms. I have noticed there are glossy ones and dull colored ones. I find that the glossy ones ripen best but if you have space store them all.

There are two thoughts on storage; the first is to wrap each tom in news paper and stack them in a box. The other thought is if you have the space, lay them out on newspaper in a cooler dark room so that when you turn on the light it is easy to collect the ripe ones or to see the rotting ones. Myself I like laying them out on a floor because there really is nothing quite like the smell of a rotting tomato. Especially one wrapped in paper and all the papers have to be removed so that you find the rotten tomato that is dictated by Murphy's Law to be found at the bottom of the box.

Doing this you could easily have toms into December and maybe beyond.

One last note; that wrinkly wilted tomato, by no means toss it, especially if the only blemish's are wrinkles. These toms can almost champion summer toms because they are dehydrated and all the goodies within are concentrated. Close your eyes and bite into a piece of heaven and daydream of summer past!