How to ripen green tomatoes. That’s coming up on This Land of Ours.
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Even if the tomatoes you’re growing are green, you can still pick them and after-ripen them indoors. Especially, if you live in a region with cold weather extremes.
It’s perfectly ok to harvest tomatoes when the fruits begin to change color and soften to the feel. At this point most of the carbohydrates and sugars that will be sent to the fruit are already present in some form, but after-ripening indoors will enhance the flavor. Just don’t harvest them when they’re too small because they may rot.
Take an average sized tomato and cut it in half. If the gelatin holding the seeds is liquid enough that when you cut through the tomato, the seeds move, then tomatoes of that size, and larger, will ripen. However, if your knife cuts the seeds in half because the gelatin around the seeds is not liquid enough to allow the seeds to move away from the knife blade, then it will most likely rot before ripening.
Place them in a paper sack with other fruits, such as a banana, that will release ethylene gas to help them mature faster. Some tomatoes, depending on the varieties and when they were picked will ripen in a few days or a few weeks.
Listen to Cathy Isom’s This Land of Ours program here.