tomatoes

puheen · Post: # 32011Post **puheen** » Wed Aug 30, 2006 9:02 pm

i have put some in wjth the tea towels and when i was watering in the tunnel this evening i noticed quite a few on the vines are starting to change colour maybe they felt intimmadated when their buddies were picked!

shirlz, i have my tunnel covered since the start of may and the cover is like the skin on a drum after the good summer
i have the frame since last year and i rang around over the winter for a price of a cover and got the same prices as i paid in may

hedgewizard · Wed Aug 30, 2006 9:12 pm

Sympathy Shirlz, from an SS point of view the biggest impact that a tunnel has is its ability to stretch the growing season, with spring arriving six weeks early and winter four weeks late. This takes some of the weight off the importance to store veg, because you have fresh stuff at the two ends of the year. I've had two crops of early carrots this year* with excess going to freeze or dry, and there'll be another crop yet. I may not bother growing maincrop next year!

*and there would have been another one but I didn't get my tunnel up until the end of March, for the same reason! Look at it this way - if it goes up one winter later, it'll last one year longer.

Mancblue · Post: # 34048Post **Mancblue** » Tue Sep 19, 2006 12:32 pm

I have almost the same problem with my toms, ours are money makers and they were grown outside and are still outside. They're all green and some are quite large now, but none of them are turning red.
We took three off to try out the (put them in a brown paper bag and leave a few days) theory. Well 9 days later they're not going red and the skin is starting to wrinkle

. I assume that the tea towel in a draw is the same principle. Now with the weather turning colder and darker any other ideas would be nice, as we were sooooo looking forward to our first home grown toms.

Col

Ps. Snikers never tasted the same as the good old Marathon.........

Tay · Post: # 34084Post **Tay** » Tue Sep 19, 2006 8:26 pm

The best way that I have found to ripen green tomatoes is to put them in a drawer or crate along with a ripe apple. Apples are probably the best as they give off a lot of the gas ethylene. A 'closed' container such as a drawer, box or paper bag is ideal as traps the gas, speeding up the ripening process.

puheen · Post: # 34085Post **puheen** » Tue Sep 19, 2006 9:21 pm

the ones i put in the drawer all ripened bare one and since then the rest are ripening on the vines harvested some last saturday and made the rivercottage roast tomatoe sauce it was absolutley gorgeous hope yours come good for you mancblue if not try some green tomatoe chutney

regards puheen

Mancblue · Post: # 34099Post **Mancblue** » Wed Sep 20, 2006 6:37 am

Thanks, i'll try that then and see how it goes. So I just put them in a draw with an apple, am I putting them in a towel or not?

Tay · Post: # 34106Post **Tay** » Wed Sep 20, 2006 7:00 am

It's up to you whether or not you choose to use a towel; the ripe apple is the most important factor. If I have had a small-ish quantity of tomatoes to ripen, I have put them in the tea-towel drawer with an apple. However, for larger amounts of tomatoes, this isn't practical (unless you have lots of towels, drawers or both!). Last year, we ended up with 4 cardboard crates of green tomatoes and we put a ripe apple in each one. Although some of them turned wrinkly, I would say that over 90% ripened properly.

If you don't have any spare apples, I have heard that bananas are another good ripening agent.

hedgewizard · Wed Sep 20, 2006 8:59 pm

I just realised, "hot press" - congrats puheen on persuading my wife I'm not mad for using that phrase instead of "airing cupboard"! I grew up in Belfast.

chadspad · Post: # 34265Post **chadspad** » Thu Sep 21, 2006 10:43 am

Having read this thread I dont understand why u r all picking green tomatoes to ripen in drawers

Does the vine produce more if u do that? I have been picking green ones cos that a variety I grew this year (lovely they were too). As for my red plants, they are still heaving with red tomatoes - dont see they could have possibly held anymore!

Millymollymandy · Sat Sep 23, 2006 6:31 am

Because they haven't ripened yet! I'm surprised though given how hot July was in England. I never had a problem with tomatoes ripening outdoors when I lived in London - was never left with an unripe tomato!

Lou8 · Post: # 34768Post **Lou8** » Tue Sep 26, 2006 10:13 am

I have same problem and we won't be far off getting frosts here in NE Scotland.
So, think I'll get hold of some apples today and try the drawer technique.

ina · Post: # 34790Post **ina** » Tue Sep 26, 2006 11:51 am

Mine started fruiting really late - I suspect it was too hot for them in the tunnel to set fruit! Is that possible?

Anyway, I've only had one red one so far - and very nice it was, too. And this reminds me that last year I had all my tomato plants festooned with banana skins. Somebody recommended that. Don't know how well it worked, but I did have more ripe tomatoes than this year.

Tay · Post: # 34799Post **Tay** » Tue Sep 26, 2006 1:04 pm

Bananas (ripe) are also a good source of ethylene, so will help to ripen the tomatoes. I think apples are slightly better (and they are usually cheaper), so I have always used those instead.

Mancblue · Post: # 35024Post **Mancblue** » Thu Sep 28, 2006 4:44 pm

Yaay!

thanks to the advice given on here both my mum and myself have had some delicious red toms, considering I'm not a fan of toms, i've eaten them all the same.

I put mine in a large Roses tin we had lying around (I don't throw much away) from a couple of christmas' ago, lined with kithen towel and a ripe apple for good messure. Left it on a southfacing window sill (indoors), had to wipe them down a couple of times due to them sweating. But there just great

Also, brought our only potted tom plant into the porch, where it's much warmer all the time, so maybe they'll ripen on there own, here's hoping.
Again thanks for the advice all.

Colin

Stonehead · Post: # 35030Post **Stonehead** » Thu Sep 28, 2006 5:26 pm

ina wrote:Mine started fruiting really late - I suspect it was too hot for them in the tunnel to set fruit! Is that possible?

Anyway, I've only had one red one so far - and very nice it was, too. And this reminds me that last year I had all my tomato plants festooned with banana skins. Somebody recommended that. Don't know how well it worked, but I did have more ripe tomatoes than this year.

Ours still haven't flowered! They're the same variety as last year, grown for the same length of time, grown in the same place (sunporch) and grown in exactly the same way. While the vines are prolific, there's not be a single flower on any of the nine vines.

Last year, we had fresh tomatoes for weeks and enough green and half ripened ones to make 20 jars of chutney.

It's been a weird year for veg!