Question:
I harvest some of my green tomatoes yearly before the frost, hoping they'll ripen indoors, but they never do. I usually place them in the sun on the window sill but eventually throw them out. How can I successfully ripen them this year?Answer:
- Leaving tomatoes out to ripen in the open air doesn't work, as you've found out.
- You ripen tomatoes off the vine in a shallow plastic or cardboard box with a lid to create a simple ripening chamber.
- The bottom of the box is lined with a one-inch layer of newspaper, and you place the green tomatoes next to one another, but don't let them touch each other. A second layer can be added, separated with another layer of newspaper, but no more.
- The box is then placed in a cool, out of the wary the way location like the garage. Every five to seven days, you open the lid a remove those that have turned red.
- The chamber traps the ethylene gas naturally given off by the tomatoes. You can hasten the ripening by adding an apple or other fruit that releases ethylene. I know an old-school method would have you wrap each tomato separately in a newspaper or other material and store them in a box. I think it's tedious, and the lid makes that unnecessary.
- You should select tomatoes that haven't been damaged by the cold. So, it may be too late for this year, but I'd still try a few anyway to get a feel for the technique.