Re: [gardeners] 'maters
Margaret Lauterbach (gardeners@globalgarden.com)
Fri, 02 Oct 1998 07:00:10 -0600
At 05:42 PM 10/1/98 -0500, you wrote:
>
>Hi Kim, Allen, and all,
>
>This spring I received a brochure on tomatoes. It says one should
>not try to ripen the green ones in sunlight but wrap them in paper.
>For me, that's too much work to unwrap all the time to see what's
>ripe. I just put them in a container and sort through daily and eat
>the ripe ones. Depending upon where you are (we had frost in
>September in Oregon) my tomatoes lasted until December. They
>don't have the rich taste of vine-ripened, but they are good.
>
>I use the battered, thickly-sliced, unripe tomatoes fried in margarine
>as a breakfast side dish with eggs and bacon. They are good as a
>side dish with any meal.
>
>Barbara Davis zone 7/8 southwest of Fort Worth, TX
>
The best containers for tomatoes are free. Most stores are glad to get rid
of them, too. They're the two inch deep boxes that beverages come in:
Cokes, beer, Pepsi, etc. That will force you not to stack tomatoes where
they can be punctured by the stems of the bottom layer. Lay them in there
one tomato layer deep, and you can see at a glance what's ripe, ripening or
still green. Wrapping them in newspaper is too much work, and 'maters will
rot unseen by human eye unless you regularly unwrap and wrap. Margaret