I always go through a period when I feel like my tomatoes are never going to get ripe. .....but they always do...Hang in there...pretty soon you'll be up to your eyeballs in ripe tomatoes.

There have been a lot of folks around here with the same problem. I read that you need to stress the plant and the fruit will turn faster. You can either use a spade right next to one side of the plants to sever the roots or give the vine a good tug to loosen the roots. This tricks the plant into thinking it is stressed and speeds the fruit to ripen. I have never had to use this advice so I am not sure it works, but it sounds reasonable... Good luck. C

I live fairly close to the WV border in Ohio. This year has been unusual as far as tomatoes and ripening. I have had to literally pick mine when they blanch out white and bring them into my solarium to ripen to have any sizeable harvest at all. We had a very long, very wet, and very cool spring. We had enough heat in the summer days, but nights in July and August you'd think would be hot, but hovering in the 50s and some nights in the high forties. Bizarre. Even the farm markets were advertising 'green tomatoes' through July because nobody had a summer ripe tomato harvest in our area. Mine didn't even 'try' to ripen until nearly September, a good month behind schedule and two months behind some summers. They just hung on the vine in suspended animation.

wvbetsy,

calliope nailed it. Many of us have been stuck in a pattern of cool nights for a long time. Knowledgeable Horticulturists will tell you that night temps below about 70 degrees F. will slow, even almost stop, tomato ripening....no matter the daytime temps. Here in PA, night temps have hovered in the 50's and low 60's for weeks when they should have been in the mid 70's at least. Although I've had some ripening, harvest is far below normal. Everyone around here is griping and grumbling about their still green maters! Time is running out, and many tomatoes will succumb to frost this year without a chance of getting ripe...unless they're brought inside (yuck!)

Hal in Pa.

I agree with the others in regard to an unusual year. Here is what you can do to salvage it.

When the first killing frost threatens, pull up the plants by the roots. Wrap the plants in newspaper and hang them upside down in your basement, crawlspace, attic or whathaveyou.

Wrapping them in newspaper does a few things. It reduces the transpiration rate which is the rate the leaves expire water, it traps humidity around the leaves which also reduces transpiration. It allows the plant to continue doing it's thing for awhile after being uprooted and hung to dry.

This stresses the plant which causes it to focus on ripening the existing fruits while at the same time it feeds the fruits whatever the plant has left.

The alternative is sacrifice the plant and pluck the fruits and put them in a grocery bag to ripen. This works to a point, but does not result in the maximum number of 'vine ripened' fruits which simply taste better.

This is only my second year trying to grow tomatoes. Some weeks back, one plant gave me quite a few ripe tomatoes, but since then I've only had one or two ripen, although I've got tons of developing tomatoes. Our nights have been in the 50s and 40s, not unusual for this time of year, but I'm worried that I won't get enough tomatoes for even a small batch of tomato sauce.

So when do I give up on them ripening in the garden? When it gets below a certain degrees at night? It's been in the high forties at night and the high 60's during the day here. I did notice that the plants that I picked branches off of are ripening more than the ones that I did nothing to.

You could also do what I do with my green toms--make green tomato pickles and green tomato chili sauce :D

you can use banana to help you ripen them

Here is a link that might be useful: ripening-green-tomatoes

Another trick I do is stop watering them right about now--they will panic and a lot of fruit will ripen.

I have yet to grow a red tomato here due to our season.

{{gwi:112273}}

This year I built a house to stop the cold wind off the ocean but we had a colder year than normal.

I have it closed in but will be like these from last year.

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Just green tomatoes!

This was my first year growing tomatoes and mine ripened late too. The grape tomatoes were red in early July, but the Rutgers not until late July and the Beefsteak not until August. Now I have a ton of green Rutgers and Beefsteak on the plants.

At first I didn't realize it was just the weather this season, but by now I've read quite a bit of people saying they had a much better crop last year. This thread has been helpful too b/c I did not realize they wouldn't ripen if it gets into the 50's at night, which it has been. So thanks!

The good news is, you can make fried green tomatoes. I just had them for the first time, they were delicious! I am also going to try green tomato salsa and maybe even green tomato pie.

Here is a green tomato recipe list, and below you can see a pic of the fried green tomatoes I made, with some garden fresh red tomato salsa on top.
http://southernfood.about.com/od/greentomatoes/Green_Tomato_Recipes.htm

Here is a link that might be useful:

Take a couple of nice slices from each tomato and freeze a whole batch on cookie sheets. Put in ziplocks and they are ready for whenever you want to make fried green tomatoes throughout the winter. Just be sure to leave the slices frozen when you bread and fry. This works really well.

Then use the ends of the tomatoes that weren't good for slicing to make green salsa. This also freezes well.

I will be doing this over the next week as it supposed to get really cool.

Karen, great ideas, thank you! I've had a decent share of ripened tomatoes, but expect to have many more greenies at the fast-approaching end of the growing season.

Those small cherry type greenies are great prepared like a fermented pickle. Add some garlic, dill and a small hot pepper to the ferment. Great as a relish when "smooshed" in a food processor.

Curiously, some cherry tomato vines pulled and tossed on a pile for later composting, continued to ripen green ones. I fed them to the chickens. Not sure how this would work for bigger toms, however.

Bejay

One green tomato got knocked off when a plant was blown over. Will it ripen sitting on the counter, or should I put it in a paper lunch bag to ripen?