As temperatures cool down in the fall and you know that the tomatoes set on your plants will not ripen, it is time to pick them green and either cook them green or let them ripen off the vine.
We used to ripen tomatoes on our window sill and are here to report that’s a bad idea. Ripening tomatoes need dark, cool spots, not bright warm spots like a window sill.
As you would ripen avocados, place the tomatoes in a paper bag and place the bag in a cool spot. Ideally you would place one tomato in one bag by itself but depending on how many tomatoes you have you will quickly run out of bags. As an alternative, use an egg carton for smaller paste tomatoes and even for the smaller round tomatoes you harvest. Place the carton in a cool place. In our picture here, the picture to the left is the tomatoes as they came out of the garden. The middle picture is Day 5 and the right picture is Day 10. Of course the cartons were closed and set in a cool dark room during those days, not left on our back porch step waiting for more pictures.
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