I posted this question early last month, but it's come up again in the Gardening Forum this week. Although some of us have already been flirting with frosty temperatures, many others are just now facing the fact of lots of green tomatoes and not a lot of time.
Since patience is no longer an option, I'm once again featuring a few ways to coax your tomatoes along. Here are my tips for getting those obstinate green tomatoes to finally ripen. But take heart and remember, when all else fails, you can always dig up the whole plant, hang it in the garage and buy yourself a week or two more time.
Photo: © Marie Iannotti
Comments
The other night i was tempted to pick the greenies as it went down to almost freezing(0 celsius)
Last few days?Hot and muggy as July.
Strangest year i have ever seen.
Although my tomatoes are still growing(better late than never)i’m following your advice and pinching them and removing new blossoms.Just ripening what i have.
So many people by me had to destroy all their tomato plants months ago, because of Late Blight. I’m just glad to have some green tomatoes left. Strange year is right.
There is a new spray called freezepruf, that you can spray on plants to extend the growing season by 2 weeks.
I hadn’t heard of FeezePruf, but I like the Liquid Fence line of products. It sounds like something I could go overboard with very easily. Thanks for mentioning it.
Rather than wait we pulled down our plants to put down a cover crop for the winter. We ended up with a bunch of green cheery tomatoes that my wife turned into Green Tomato Pickle, which is fantastic with grilled sausages.
Christopher, sometimes that’s the smartest thing to do.
Care to post the pickle recipe?
What has worked beautifully for me in getting tomatoes to
ripen is to stress them by holding back on the watering. It
works every time.
Nancy, I like the simplicity of that tip. Stress seems to be a great motivator for plants.
Battle continues to get tomatoes to ripen.
I start my plants indoors in Jan/Feb, place plants after frost, still have late late “early boy” etc tomatoes.
I live in high desert, plenty warm days, few tomatoes before september.
tlfmd, that’s a long, long season. You must have incredible patience. I know the high desert isn’t the ideal growing condition for tomatoes, but I don’t know if I’d be willing to coax them along for 10 months.
first year, I got TONS, but never again. I used peat, manure, specific commercial tomato fertilizers judiciously and regularly.
We DO live in a “banana belt”, sort of a huge solar frying pan between Cascades and foothills of Rockies. We grow lots of veggies here (commercially). Thus it is a good place to grow tomatoes.
Is there a nutrient “signal” to apply to encourage ripening without inducing fall apoptosis? ( avoid the way 2,4 T kills)
I wouldn’t mind being in a Banana Belt right now.
Sorry, I don’t know of any nutrient means of inducing ripening. Stress will do it, but that’s a last resort.