The short, quick answer is yes, pick all the ones that have even the slightest blush of color (other than green) to indicate they are starting to ripen. Those tomatoes will continue to ripen if you set them on a counter or table out of direct sunlight.

How much more you want to do is up to you. Here's the more complicated answer that describes various methods you can use to spread out the last of the tomato harvest:

If you have a lot of fully green tomatoes that have not yet reached the breaker stage (where there is at least a slight blush of pinkish-, reddish-, orangeish-, yellowish- or whitish-color to indicate ripening is imminent), you can 'save' these in a couple of different ways:

a) Pick them green. Use them for fried green tomatoes or Bacon-Lettuce-Fried Green Tomato Sandwiches. Or, use them to make a green tomato relish or chow chow. Or, slice them, freeze the slices on a baking sheet in the freezer, remove them from the baking sheet once frozen, and put them in zip-lock bags and return them to the freezer. Later on, remove from freezer, batter them while still frozen, and fry them. They won't have exactly the same texture as fresh fried green tomatoes, but they'll still taste good.

b) Water the plants and give them a couple of hours so the roots can soak up some water. Then, pull up the plant roots and all and hang it upside down in a cool, dry, non-freezing location. I usually use the insulated barn/garage or the tornado shelter. If you have a basement, you can use it. The tomatoes generally will continue to ripen over a period of weeks. You also can do this with peppers if you still have them in the ground.

c) Pick the green tomatoes. Wrap each one in newspaper and line them up in rows in cardboard boxes. Store them in a cool, dry location like a garage, tornado shelter, basement or unheated pantry or closet. Check them for signs of ripening every few days. Once the color of a tomato begins to change color to indicate ripening, remove it from the box, unwrap it and place it on a counter to finish ripening.

d) After you've picked all the ripening ones and have only green ones left, you can cover up the plant(s) with a very heavy blanket like a comforter or sleeping bag and that MIGHT (there's no guarantee) keep the plants or tomatoes from being damaged. Be sure to uncover in the morning so the plants/fruit don't roast.

If you have more ripe tomatoes than you can eat at once, you can freeze them, can them, dehydrate them, or cook them down into sauce.

And, remember, frost can form at 38 or 39 degrees if the night is clear and there is no frost, so don't take any chances.

Hope this info helps.

Dawn

Thank you Dawn for all the info, I guess I'll be busy tomorrow. lol

Well, we stripped my tomatoes tonight and are ready to cover up tomorrow night and hope they make it a few more weeks. We're suppose to be about 56 tonight and 36 tomorrow night. I still have loads of green tomatoes on both my Better Boy and my Roma. I really hate to let them go so soon, especially after they suddenly decided that yes, they were suppose to give me tomatoes in exchange for all the watering and care I gave them. We had that problem with the pollen being "sticky" I guess, because after I followed some tips from this forum about shaking them, spraying them during the heat of the day to cool them some, hand pollinating with a fine paintbrush, etc. they finally started producing, but not until the last 6 weeks or so. Once they woke up, I didn't have the heart to pull them and replace them with fall plants. So the fall ones went into a different spot. Since I'm going to do a lot of amending and raising this spring, I wasn't worried about having so many tomatoes, though the fall plants went into the spot I'd planned for next spring's toms.

Oh, and Dawn, I got seeds for some of the varieties you all suggested. I'll list some of them tomorrow. The one I'm most curious about is the Chocolate Cherry :)

Kathy

Kathy,

If you have a spare couple of hours (and I know that with a family and a job, a couple of hours can be hard to find), use 4mm or 6mm to build a mini-hoop house around a few tomato plants. You can make an individual one around each plant, using three bamboo poles, pieces of PVC pipe, leftover 1" x 2" lumber, etc. Or, if you have woven wire tomato cages, wrape the plastic around the cages and twist it closed or tie it closed at the top. Now, anywhere the foliage touches the plastic, the foliage will freeze and die if y'all have a frost. But, the rest of the plant ought to survive and keep producing a while longer.

Our first year here, with an early freeze threatening on SEPTEMBER 30th (and we didn't realize it until the 5 p.m. news/weather because I was in the midst of 3 cancer surgeries within 6 weeks and was understandably distracted), so we ran outside and made a temporary hoophouse over about 8 tomato plants. I think I had Better Boy, Celebrity, Sweet Million and SunGold that year and they were simply covered in ripening fruit.

Our 'hoophouse' had no hoop shape to it because we had 1" x 2" lumber and 6 mm plastic. Instead it was roughly in a shoebox shape and about 6' tall. We quickly nailed together a boxy frame and just draped the plastic (it was 10' wide and we'd purchased it from Home Depot) over the frame. We used a couple of short pieces of duct tape to hold the ends closed. Because a lot of the plant foliage touched the plastic and we were expecting a hard freeze, I then threw a couple of blankets over the plastic just as the sun was setting.

How well did it work? Well, we had a horrible hard freeze and all the rest of my veggies and flowers froze, but the plants inside the wood-framed hoop house were fine. In areas on the ends where the blankets didn't cover the plastic, foliage and fruit (mostly Sweet Million) died. However, those plants stayed alive and producing about 6 to 8 more weeks. I was so excited we had managed to save the fall crop. I did remove the blanket from the top of the structure just before sunup to avoid too much heat gain. Every morning, I'd pull back the plastic after temperatures were above freezing or after air temps had warmed up to 40 degrees (the threshold for frost). If the weather was mild, I pulled back the plastic off the frame and left it lying on the ground. If the weather was chilly, I'd leave the plastic over the top of the frame, but roll it up at the ends so that both ends of the row were open for air flow. When I watered, I was very careful to keep the water on the ground and not on the foliage, since being wet underneath the plastic could have caused a lot of foliar diseases.

It sounds like more work than it was, and it was definitely worth it to prolong the tomato harvest because, you know, once you've picked that last tomato in the fall, it it going to be many months before you have ripe home-grown tomatoes again.

Just a couple of years ago, I planted my tomatoes really early. (I always plant them early to get the earliest possible harvest, and it usually pays off.....I tend to have the first ripe tomatoes in April, as early as mid-April in a warm year). A prolonged cold spell, including ice and snow threatened. Other parts of OK got the ice and snow, but I think all we got here in Love County was a lot of rain and frost. I had the tomato cages over my small plants, so I bought a couple of rolls of 10' wide by 100' long 4 mm plastic and draped it over the tomato cages. Because my tomato cages are 6' to 8' tall, I had to cut two sheets for each row of plants. I overlapped them at the top and taped them together with duct tape. I taped the ends closed, and laid boards or large rocks on top of the plastic at ground level to keep the wind from blowing the plastic "upward", since it was the March/April timeframe and there was a lot of wind out of the north. I also put 4- and 5-gallon buckets of water in between every two tomato plants so the water could heat up during the day and then release the heat at night. I think I kept that plastic over the tomatoes for about 3 weeks, and only lost a couple of the 100 plants, and the rest of the plants grew just fine under that plastic.

So, it is possible to save tomatoes with a little time and plastic.

And, I wouldn't especially worry what the plastic structure looks like....you aren't trying to win a "most beautiful veggie garden" contest this week.....just trying to save the plants.

If the frost were going to be brief, you probably could use a Reemay Frost Blanket, but they are very expensive and only offer a few degrees of protection.

I look forward to seeing your tomato list. I don't grow Chocolate Cherry, but I think either Jill, Sherry, Ilene or Carol may have. I grow Black Cherry, which is possibly the best cherry tomato ever. (And I hope SunGold forgives me for saying that, because it is insanely good also.)

Dawn

Dawn,

I've got several "hoop houses" put together already and everything's covered, along with the tomatoes. I did it earlier today once the rain stopped. It's been cool, but doing it this evening will help preserve a little heat. I managed to get them put together so that very little of the foliage is touching the plastic and none of what is has existing toms on it :) We shook off the majority of the water first and tied up any tomatoes that were just too small to be picked. They are currently nestled inside a blanket of foliage along with the plastic.

I'm hoping they will be alright, I'd like a few more weeks of tomatoes. I've got about a half bushel that are ripening, another half that's already ripe and I'll be blanching tomorrow for sauce, etc. We also sliced and fried up about 6 for fried green tomatoes tonight with the purple hull peas, fried ( and very well drained) potatoes with red onion and cornbread. All the veggies were from my gardens. My two oldest boys came over for dinner. Amazing how such a simple meal can bring everyone back home and to the table! Talk about a king's feast! Everyone's moaning and groaning at the moment!

Kathy

Kathy,

That's all terrific news....everything from getting some hoophouses over the plants to try to get them through the current cold snap to the wonderful meal of yuummy home-cooked veggies!

I hope the hoophouses work for you, and they ought to since the temps are not going much below the danger zone. (To me, the danger zone is 40 since frost forms below that.)

The end of the harvest of warm-season veggies is always kind of depressing, because you know that nothing from the store will taste as good. I have a freezer and a half full of yummy stuff from the garden, but we sure do go through it fast in the winter time.

I was counting on the wind, which was forecast to keep blowing all night here, to help keep frost away....but now the wind has all but died down. Grrrr! Can't they forecast anything correctly?? I still think we likely won't have a frost here, but I've been wrong before.

You know, you're spoiling those boys with that good home cooking! That's OK, though, because that's what moms do.

Dawn