best way to ripen green tomatoes ?

nottooxabi

Hi There,

grew tomatoes from seed, planted out... cared for them etc etc..
I know have about 40 tomatoes of a reasonable size.. however they are still green.

As its mid september I doubt they will ripen on the vines so i'm thinking of giving them one more week before picking and hopefully ripening them.

I've heard that if you put them in the bottom of a cardboard box covered with newspaper they will ripen in about 2 weeks. Also heard suggestions of putting a banana in to speed up the process.

Has anyone any advice on the best way to turn green to red ? Will they definitely ripen if i leave them for long enough?

I've tested this with one tomato.. its about 6 days now and no sign of it turning red, although it is deffo softer so i'm presuming ripening inside..

Thanks

ps see attached images of 1 of the plants and 1 picked tomato.

kellso81

I'm afraid I don't know how to ripen them but if you're stuck with them I've a great recipe for a green tomato chutney I did with mine!

redser7

What you've described will work. Just check on them every week or so.

johngalway

I read on another site just a couple of days ago that removing all of the leaves from the plant will force it into ripening the tomatoes. I don't know if this works or not, it's just what I have read, maybe try it on your smallest plant and see if it works or not.

http://www.thehuntinglife.com/forums/topic/217794-toms/

fitzcoff

kellso81 wrote: »

I'm afraid I don't know how to ripen them but if you're stuck with them I've a great recipe for a green tomato chutney I did with mine!

Can I have your recipe, ours are very slow to ripen this year, we have ours in the polytunnel and getting fed up of them now, salad weather is gone

My mother has some growing in a glasshouse and all hers ripen so I have been using her surplus to make Rachel Allen spicy tomato and apple chutney, I use white wine vinegar in this.

http://uktv.co.uk/food/recipe/aid/573902

fitzcoff

nottooxabi wrote: »

Hi There,



I've heard that if you put them in the bottom of a cardboard box covered with newspaper they will ripen in about 2 weeks. Also heard suggestions of putting a banana in to speed up the process.

.

Have read that if you put a ripe banana next to the plants it's suppose to ripen the tomatoes but no idea if it works

longshanks

Bananas release a chemical that helps speed up the ripening process, I'm told.
So your original plan sounds like a good one.

nottooxabi

Thanks for the ideas..
I'll let you know how i get on with the "test tomato" first...

they smell amazing so am hoping they ripen soon...
I dont particularly want 10 jars of chutney !

nottooxabi

just read this but no idea if its gospil...

Ripen tomatoes OFF the plant

Tomatoes ripen from the bottom up and the inside out, so don't put tomatoes on a windowsill to ripen because they will only turn red, but not ripe. They will stay green inside.

Instead do this:

1. Place your unripened tomatoes on a tray, and then put them in a dark, warm spot

2. Cover them with a single sheet of newspaper

3. These are the conditions tomatoes need to continue the ripening process, which is internal. The light, which was needed for "growth" isn't needed anymore

4. Eat when ready

The Garden Shop

I can confrim that the cardboard box does work with a couple of on the turn banannas. I have done this several times but individually wrapped each tomato in newspaper.

I also ripen them on the indside sill in the kitchen but don't know how well that will work this time of year.

Just to note, once ripened in the box, they do lose some flavour unfortunately but still better than throwing away. The chutney is a cracking idea also.

magicbastarder

what ripens tomatoes - and fruit in general - is ethylene gas. the riper a banana is, the more it produces.

Sonnenblumen

The banana trick works but also leaving the tomatoes on a sunny widow cill does too.;)

nottooxabi

Sonnenblumen wrote: »

The banana trick works but also leaving the tomatoes on a sunny widow cill does too.;)

sunny window cill - eh where do i get one of them in september in ireland

pneireland

i grew some tomatoes from seed- sowed them in april and left them in a south facing porch for a few weeks till they grew enough leaves to allow them to be put out to toughen up for a week or so.....nothing only leaves to show for that.....stuck the whole lot in some hanging baskets and left them outside from about middle of june - went on holidays in middle of august and nothing had shown on them at that time - forgot to tell anyone to water them and when we came back after a fortnight there were any amount of small green tomatoes on the bushes and they were now in the most arid of compost or whatever it was that came with them when i first bought them from lidl - i dead-headed all the dead leaves and watered them not really thinking anything would come of it (also used a small amount of that tomato grow liquid that you can get anywhere. A week or so later, one, yea one (!) had begun to turn yellow so i quickly brought it in and put it on the sunny (?) south facing windowsill of the porch, where it just withered up and turned into something the size of a grape and as wrinkled as a prune !! - eventually binned it!.....right now (and they've been outside even during last weeks stormy weather), there are a couple of quite red ones appearing - they're no size though.
i think i'm gonna leave them outside and just let them do whatever they wanna do - most of them are only the size of a grape but one or two are a bit bigger including the couple of red ones.

As regards that thing about putting them in a drawer with a banana, i presume its a PEELED banana you're talking about ? !!!

SlimCi

I heard dermot o'neill on the radio yesterday about ripening tomatoes and this is what he said. Put them into a brown paper bag with a ripe apple into a cool place and he said that the chemical the apple releases to ripen it will help to ripen the tomatoes. Hope this helps.:D

Sonnenblumen

nottooxabi wrote: »

sunny window cill - eh where do i get one of them in september in ireland

Hope you took full advantage of some of the warmest and sunniest days of the year!:p

Corsendonk

pneireland wrote: »

i grew some tomatoes from seed- sowed them in april and left them in a south facing porch for a few weeks till they grew enough leaves to allow them to be put out to toughen up for a week or so.....nothing only leaves to show for that.....stuck the whole lot in some hanging baskets and left them outside from about middle of june - went on holidays in middle of august and nothing had shown on them at that time - forgot to tell anyone to water them and when we came back after a fortnight there were any amount of small green tomatoes on the bushes and they were now in the most arid of compost or whatever it was that came with them when i first bought them from lidl - i dead-headed all the dead leaves and watered them not really thinking anything would come of it (also used a small amount of that tomato grow liquid that you can get anywhere. A week or so later, one, yea one (!) had begun to turn yellow so i quickly brought it in and put it on the sunny (?) south facing windowsill of the porch, where it just withered up and turned into something the size of a grape and as wrinkled as a prune !! - eventually binned it!.....right now (and they've been outside even during last weeks stormy weather), there are a couple of quite red ones appearing - they're no size though.
i think i'm gonna leave them outside and just let them do whatever they wanna do - most of them are only the size of a grape but one or two are a bit bigger including the couple of red ones.

As regards that thing about putting them in a drawer with a banana, i presume its a PEELED banana you're talking about ? !!!

Unpeeled, they naturally release ripening gas(ethylene) through its peel.

pneireland

This is very confusing seeing as Nottooxabi says ''put them in a dark, warm spot''

whereas SlimCi advises we should put them in a cool place !!!!

which is the correct way??
Surely both methods dont work, do they?

redser7

I guess they mean not too hot, not too cold.

planetX

I just put them all into a brown paper bag and pop into a kitchen cupboard. Most important thing is to keep checking for rotten ones.