CORRECTION: On tomato ripening trick

[---Pete---]

Trick for ripening Tomatoes....

>According the the book by Dick Raymond; The Love of Gardening, >you can make your tomatoes ripen faster if you do "root pruning" >when the tomatoes are green. Root pruning is where you take your >spade shovel and cut into the earth in a half circular pattern about >12 inches from the plant. Supposedly, this cuts into the root system >and triggers the plant to ripen the tomatoes. Try it! >Let me know if it works for you. > >---pete---

------------------- CORRECTION.... ...cut into the earth in a half circular pattern about

6 inches from the plant ( NOT 12 inches).

Supposedly, your tomatoes will ripen within one week.

---pete---

[Frankhartx]

Even if it works I don't like the idea of possible lessening of furure harvests. by damaging the root system, even though the system goes pretty deep.

[---Pete---]

That could be true but only a problem if you have a small number of plants. The idea is to have a few ripe tomatoes as soon as possible. Best to try it on only one or two plants if you others you can rely upon for the full season.

Besideds, that, I'm not really sure what effect the root pruning has on the plant for the remaining portion of the growing season.

Right now, here in New Jersey, my garden is a few weeks behind schedule compared to previous years (more rainy & cold this year) and I don't even have any green tomatoes on the plants yet. Therefore, I'll probably be trying this trick on the first plant that produces decent sized tomatoes. Over the growing season I should be able to compare the root pruned plant's production to another similar plant that was not root pruned. I'll post my findings here.

---pete---

[Dwayne]

The best use of this method is when the first frost will be there within 30 days and they are still green. It will allow you to salvage some before the frost hits.

Dwayne