Harvesting and ripening tomatoes

Tomatoes ripening on window sill.

The greener they are, the longer they will take to ripen in the sun.

Is this a familiar sight in your house? You know it’s late summer/early fall when the nighttime temperatures are cool and the tomatoes still aren’t ripening as quickly as you’d like them to. One thing I love about tomatoes is that you can pick them when they're green and eventually they will ripen. Practically every window sill in our house is lined with unripe fruit.

I planted five varieties: Tiny Tim, Big Beef, Bush Beefsteak, La Roma and Health Kick, similar in size to Roma but has large amounts of the antioxidant lycopene, which is helps to reduce the risks of heart disease and cancer. Lycopene is also good for your skin and is often found in anti-aging creams and lotions.

I planted five varieties of tomatoes.

However, this time last year, I was already canning like mad making tomato sauces, salsas and stewed tomatoes. So far, I have only made four jars of plum tomatoes. The greenhouse plants are heavy with fruit, but the tomatoes are still pretty green. A critter has been munching on some of them, though, so I decided to pick a batch and bring them indoors where they’d be safe from the "greenhouse gobbler". I left a dozen damaged fruit around the plants as an offering to the pests.

Determined to save as many as possible, I sprinkled baby powder on the plants and fruit, including the cantaloupe and butternut squash that the mysterious critter has been snacking on. I’m guessing it’s a vole (field mouse) or maybe a slug/snail. I wonder if garter snakes snack on tomatoes?

Now, what to do with all of these unripe tomatoes? It’s a good thing that we have many windows in our house with deep sills, perfect for setting tomatoes to ripen in the sun. For the two dozen or so that are still green, I follow my grandmother’s advice about wrapping each piece in newspaper and setting them in a cool place until they ripen, anywhere from a week to three weeks, depending on the tomato size. She always had fantastic tomatoes.

An easy way to speed up the ripening process.

Recycle clean newspaper by wrapping your tomatoes.

I remember going into back porch of her house and seeing dozens of newspaper balls in cardboard boxes, crates and on tables, ledges and anywhere else a wrapped tomato could fit. I wrapped my tomatoes in newspaper and placed them in a laundry basket in the basement in a high and dry area.

Keep wrapped tomatoes in a laundry basket in a cool place.

Maybe if I keep them in a laundry basket near the freezer, I’ll remember to check them often, not like last fall when I totally forgot about a dozen wrapped tomatoes in a cardboard box. They were discovered several months later – not a pretty sight.

I want to savor as many as possible this year, so a few dozen whole tomatoes are already in the freezer (in large freezer bags), to thaw them and make sauces, salsas, stews and chili during the next couple of months. I have a feeling that later this month, I’ll be canning like crazy. Must get more jars…and baby powder.