Re: [gardeners] green tomatoes
Margaret Lauterbach (gardeners@globalgarden.com)
Sun, 12 Nov 2000 12:47:03 -0700
At 01:59 PM 11/12/00 -0500, you wrote:
>Hello folks,
>
>Once again, I seek advice. My gardening books tell me that green tomatoes
>will ripen indoors in 2 or 3 weeks, longer if you wrap them individually in
>newspaper and store them in a cool dark place. Has anyone tried this, or
>any other method for ripening green tomatoes? I'm not a fan of fried green
>tomatoes as much as I like the red ones, and unbelievably we were still
>getting ripe ones up until this week (here in zone 5!). But snow is on the
>way, so I've gone out and harvested and now I have a big bucket of green
>tomatoes I'm not quite sure what to do with...
>
>I'd prefer not to have a box of rotting green tomatoes in my basement (to
>join the racks of what look like rotting--but we hope are merely
>"curing"--gourds!) so if you have any tips for success in ripening them,
>please pass them along.
>
>Thanks,
>
>Wendy
>
>(I thought when I moved here from San Diego that I'd have a SHORT gardening
>season, but in fact we've had more harvest time here than I ever had in So.
>Cal. Amazing year...)
Don't waste your time wrapping them in newspaper. All that does is prevent
you from seeing whether the tomatoes are ripening. They'll go from green to
rotten, unseen by human eyes. Put them in a cool place, out of direct
sunlight, in shallow boxes (no more than two tomatoes deep). Cut beverage
boxes (i.e., for four six packs) work great for this. That way you can see
the top one and the bottom one. I sort through the tomatoes at least once
a week, putting those that are coloring in a box of their own. I'm in zone
5 too, and when we picked green ones before frost, we often had fresh
tomatoes up until Christmas. Margaret L