Others will have a different skin color when ripe, such as purple tomatoes. However, when we think it through, it makes perfect sense. Remember that high temperatures can prevent tomatoes from ripening.
In the height of summer, the sun beats down on tomato plants all day long. The tops of the tomatoes get most of the sunlight, so they heat up more so than the rest of the fruit that is, the bottom and sides stay slightly cooler than the top.
This temperature difference could account for the lack of ripening on the top of the fruit while the bottom and sides ripen up nicely. Tomato plants do need sunlight to grow, as I explain in my article her e. However, tomatoes do not need sunlight to ripen! Tomato plants use sunlight to produce energy via photosynthesis. Once they produce and store enough energy, it is a matter of sending it to the fruit so that they can reach full size.
Once the tomatoes reach full size, they will begin to ripen as long as the temperature is right. If it is too hot, the ripening process will slow down or stop.
Since too much sunlight can heat up the fruit on a tomato plant, it might be necessary to provide some shade for your plants later in the season to encourage ripening of the fruit. According to the Cornell University Extension, sunlight does not have much to do with ripening once the fruit is fully formed. Maybe it is too hot or too cold for your tomatoes to ripen, or maybe you just want to speed things up. Either way, there are some ways to get tomatoes to ripen.
So, what are the best ways to turn green tomatoes red? According to the Kansas State University Extension, tomatoes ripen faster on the vine until the breaker stage :. When this occurs, there is nothing that can move from the plant into the fruit. At that point, it is up to the tomato fruit itself to ripen. The plant cannot help it any more at that point, since it cannot send any more nutrients, hormones, or pigments to the fruit.
So, once a tomato reaches the breaker stage, there is no advantage to leaving it on the vine to ripen. You can leave it on if you want, but if a frost is threatening, pick the tomatoes and let them ripen off the vine more on this later. There are a couple of ways that you can help your tomatoes to ripen faster when they are still on the vine.
For one thing, you can use shade cloth to provide some shade and keep your tomato plants cooler. This mesh-like material blocks out some sunlight, and can keep plants up to 10 degrees Fahrenheit cooler. Also, avoid pruning branches and leaves off of the plant. Any pruning will allow more sunlight to hit the fruit, which will cause it to heat up and reduce ripening.
According to the Colorado State University Extension, if there are too many tomatoes on a plant that have not reached the breaker stage, you might want to pick half of them off and compost them.
The other half of the tomatoes will then have a better chance of getting to the breaker stage, since the plant can concentrate its energy on fewer fruit. This strategy is better suited to the fall, when temperatures have started to drop and you need the fruit to ripen before frost.
As a last resort, you can pull up the entire tomato plant and bring it indoors, as long as it is not too tall.
Get more tips on our Harvesting Tomatoes Pinterest board. Harvesting tomatoes: when to pick them Is it ripe? When to pick tomatoes at peak ripeness By ripening green tomatoes, you can extend your harvest How to extend harvest of homegrown tomatoes How to save tomato seeds to plant next year Protecting tomatoes from frost and freezing Tomato flowers. Cordon tomatoes ripening on plant with leaves removed to speed up ripening process.
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