Harvesting Tomatoes – Red, Green, and Everything In-Between

In Denver, Colorado, we fight hard for home grown tomatoes.  Our dry, rather basic soil is not ideal for the makings of award winning tomatoes.  We amend the soil with compost and manure, then water like mad 6 days each week to be certain these delicate plants survive our high desert environment with hot summer days and cool nights.  If the hail doesn’t trample the vines throughout the season, we can look forward to a bountiful harvest of tomatoes – in the fall.  Fall tomatoes?  In other parts of the country, tomatoes tend to ripen and are ready to eat by sometime in July.  For Denver, we tend to see our first red tomatoes in late August.  

With a potential frost date of September 15 (while rare, it can happen), there is a tight window for the tomato plants to develop mature red produce.  Fall is quite pleasant in Denver with high temperatures in the upper 70s to 80s through the month of September.  October is usually where we lose our crop.  Temps dive low at night and we will most certainly have a snow at some point in the month.  The problem with this is that the tomatoes have no idea what is about to happen. Instead, they pluck along offering a few new red tomatoes each day.  In the days leading up to a predicted overnight freeze, I pull every living tomato off the vines.  Not just the ready-red tomatoes, but also green, and everything in between.  

The beauty is that the green tomatoes don’t need the plant to survive and ripen to a perfect red.  If you protect them from the cold, they will ripen on their own with time. The result is tomatoes everywhere in the house.  

On the counter tops, in the garage, even artfully displayed in a bowl on the dining room table. Sort your unripened tomatoes by color.  Red in one area, almost red in another.  Then the green tomatoes in their own pile.  

Freeze whatever is ripe now that you can’t either eat in a week or give away. See my article titled freezing your tomatoes. Lay the almost ripe and unripe tomatoes on a flat surface for storage.  Use shallow platters, box tops, and even newspapers. 

The goal is to keep them from being on top of each other.  This will also allow you to easily identify any of your crop that are not doing well. Discard any that appear to be rotting during this ripening process.  They will do best in a cool area while they ripen, 50-70 degrees is ideal.  Keep the almost ripe close.  You’ll likely eat those within the next 2-4 weeks.  The tomatoes that are green at harvest time will slowly ripen at different stages.  I am still eating on my garden tomatoes at the end of the year, 2-3 months beyond harvest date.

Even if you don’t live in Colorado, and your tomatoes are still green on the vine at freeze time, try this technique, and never throw out another green tomato!   It works!