The best way to ripen green tomatoes
Posted by Fiona Nevile in Fruit | 32 comments
Danny loves guzzling our ripe tomatoes straight from the vine. This is partly why I grow them. It’s great to see my tomatoes savoured and relished. Now the evenings are drawing in, I often see him out with a torch when I swing in from work, searching to see if any have ripened in the autumn sunshine. The ripening process is slow at this stage of the season.
We have managed to keep the tomato blight at bay by removing blighty leaves, stalks and fruit as soon as they appear. This has to be done daily and the blighty bits burnt. We haven’t used any sprays this summer so each tomato that Danny pops in his mouth is 100% organic. When the blight was at its height I mentioned the grisly spray word, to be met with a loud negative rejoinder.
Unfortunately, Danny didn’t twig that the vines at the front of the house needed to be watered when I was ill in bed recently. Too much or too little water can split the tomatoes. So we have a good crop of split, which need a day or two of warm sun before they are transmogrified into our rich tomato sauce. We make gallons of the stuff and this generally sees us through until the spring.
This weekend I had planned to move all the non split green tomatoes to the greenhouse to ripen. A small foray onto the internet told me otherwise. Here are a few expert tips that will allow your green tomatoes to ripen well.
Some people remove the leaves from the vines and hang the vines in a cool garage or shed to ripen. I am going to ripen our green tomatoes in the house. I used to ripen them on the windowsills but I have discovered that direct sunlight hardens the skins and there is a much better way to ripen them indoors.
Pick ripe, nearly ripe and mature green fruits before the possibility of frost. Remove long stems to prevent them from piercing each other. Store tomatoes in cardboard or wooden boxes, 1 to 2 layers deep, in a cool moderately humid room. Cover the boxes with newspaper as tomatoes need darkness to ripen.. Check the toms every day and remove the ripe ones.
As tomatoes ripen, they naturally release ethylene gas, which stimulates ripening. To speed up the ripening process put a ripening tomato, apple or banana in the box with green tomatoes. To slow the ripening process and give yourself an extended harvest store some tomatoes, covered in cardboard boxes, in a cooler location.
Leave a reply
I hope so because I was very proud of my tomatoes. I have thrown about a stone of them away and I am heartbroken after using the security light to tend to them.!!! Another matter is my strawbs are now very fruitful even though I have cut off the flowers. Don’t suppose these will ripen either. I hope I have more luck next year
Hi Denise,
If the plants were healthy, I have no idea what caused the toms to rot. Perhaps someone out there knows the answer.
Thanks for the reply. The tomato plants were fine, apart from when we were flooded. They seemed to recover from this. It was the courgettes that ended up with mouldy leaves, the vegetables tasted fine.
Hi Denise,
We had tomatoes in slightly blighted plants and toms on healthy plants. The ones from the blighted plants have been stored separately and most have gone mouldy and brown. The rest are fine.
Was it page three of the Sun?
I picked my green tomatoes and did what everybody stated using newspaper. But my tomatoes have gone mouldy and brown. Where have I gone wrong? Is it because I used the Sun newspaper?
Hi Mark,
I think I might try a green tomato chutney this year as we have so many! I tried and tested recipe is always worth sharing. Thanks.
Hi Nick and Joanna.
I know the general ideal is to ripen the tomatoe until red ,but these are little green treasures right now, I would take advantage of your stock and consider making a green tomatoe and onion chutney with cumin seeds and chilli, Imagine what a fine Boxing day treat it would make with cold cuts or a Melton mowbray pork pie. I have a great recipe if you need it……
Hi Joanna,
We harvested 10 kilos! So will be able to experiment with loads of different ways to ripen them!
Hi Nick,
Thanks for the tip.
another way for a quick ripe is to place tomatoes in a brown paper bag with a banana, works well
I often put unripe toms in a basket, and check them daily, because they ripen from the middle. Or, if I want them quickly, put them in a kitchen drawer. All this because I noticed that on the vine they tend to ripen from the darkest spots nearest the stem.
How wonderful to have such a good crop of tomatoes this year – a lot of hard work, which I didn’t manage to put in, so our crop is commensurately small.
Joanna x