As posted earlier, my tomatoes this year are a disaster. Something got in them, probably brought home from nursery. That's what I get for buying plants instead of growing from seed. Fatal delay?
Question: If I pick the few remaining tomatoes green and let them ripen on the windowsill, will they still turn up infected & inedible? Or does the disease manifest itself only toward vine ripening time?
Any experience out there?
TIA
HB
Tomatoes picked wholly green generally don't ripen, at least not with any real flavor. If they've become at least somewhat pale green they may turn color eventually, but still will never achieve that fully vine-ripened flavor. This is, of course, how most grocery-store fruit are picked (before shipping & ethylene gassing).
Keeping your fruit physically separate reduces the likelihood of disease transmission. At garden year's end I simply put them on a sheet of newspaper, spaced apart. Usually these last for ~2 months.
Sorry, don't understand. Could you explain.. you're putting picked fruit on newspapers or...?
TIA
HB
Most green tomatoes will ripen, (if they are far enough along they have "jelly" in them) but the flavor will not be great -- still better than most supermarket tomatoes, and OK for cooking.
What happens if you let them vine-ripen? Or are the vines dead?
Bob
He said that if the tomatoes were turning yellow, you have a chance at shelf ripening them. A simpler approach would be to use them as you would tomatillos.
Authentic Enchiladas Verdes Ingredients Recipe makes 4 servings
2 bone-in chicken breast halves 2 cups chicken broth 1/4 white onion 1 clove garlic 2 teaspoons salt 1 pound fresh tomatillos, husks removed 5 serrano peppers 1/4 white onion 1 clove garlic 1 pinch salt 12 corn tortillas 1/4 cup vegetable oil 1 cup crumbled queso fresco 1/2 white onion, chopped 1 bunch fresh cilantro, choppedDirections 1. In a saucepan, combine chicken breast with chicken broth, one quarter onion, a clove of garlic, and 2 teaspoons salt. Bring to a boil, and then boil for 20 minutes. Reserve broth, set chicken aside to cool, and discard onion and garlic. When cool enough to handle, shred chicken with your hands.
Es muy delicioso.
Serva con una ensalada verde y una buena cerveza.
Higgs Boson wrote: ...
spread out newspapers in a place where they won't be disturbed (out of the direct sun and in a place that doesn't get hot or frozen).
place the green tomatoes on the newspapers with some space in between each fruit (so they don't touch).
eventually some of them will turn red. some will rot. that's just how it goes.
we did this last season with quite a few tomatoes that did not finish on the vine, but they came along eventually and we still ate or canned them.
yes, the flavor is not as good as vine ripened, but it is still acceptable and worth it instead of paying for tomatoes.
the way the weather is going this season we might have a garage full of them...
songbird
Lot's of recipes for fried green tomatoes... and pickled tomatoes are heavenly.
Our Quisling chemist(?), Ka-Boom, didn't mention that ripening bananas give off ethelene gas, but then he doesn't know if benzene is a liquid or not.
Again, if the tomatoes are starting to yellow, you have a chance of ripening them.
I'd still recommend the enchiladas.
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This has been my experience, some turn red eventually a few get mushy and rot... I've been putting them in a paper bag with a ripe tomato, but it doesn't seem to really speed ripening up much. My dad used to pick a bunch of green tomatoes in the fall before frost, and he would have 2-3 dozen green ones in the basement which did not get much light. Most of them turned red over a few weeks. I don't remember many bad ones; he just laid them out without putting them in bags.
The ones that don't rot immediately were ones without bumps, bruises and systemic infections.
Back when the USDA's tomato germplasm collection was held at the Ames PI station, they would grow out some for increase every year. Most of the seed went back into the germplasm collection, but they'd gather up a bunch of "perfect" tomatoes from the plants and put them in a shed with long benches full of damp sand, and let them rot. (yes, it stunk! such is the price of science! ) They'd note which ones rotted first, second, last... and the lasts often went into the search for a long lived storage tomato.
Kay
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Fascinating! How long ago was this? Where can I read up about it?
TIA
HB
Mid to late 80s -- I'd have to check my transcripts to see when I took Seed Production. I wish I'd known about it when taking microbial ecology -- that sand would be fun to analyze.
It's probably all recorded in the PI records for those accessions, but I don't know that it's available online. Or you can try old reports of the North Central Regional Plant Introduction Station.
Kay
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