Tomatoes ripening.

16 years ago

Finally my tomatoes are ripening, after worrying about yellow/brown leaves and having a bunch if fruit with BER.

What I did was.

1) Use a slightly larger (plastic) pot instead of the terracotta one.

2) Cut off anythingthat was yellow/brown, dead or looking bad, which included fruits.

3) Gave it a bit of slow release veggie fert with trace elements in it.

Also I'm beginning to wonder if they need a certain amount of darkness in a day to trigger ripening as looking from other posts (from the uk) they all seem to have problems until mid-September, does that seem likely or not?

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Comments (3)

denninmi
16 years ago
I don't believe that tomatoes are photoperiodic in any way. I think ripening is related to accumulated heat units. I believe that, in in UK with its mild to cool summers, you will often have ripening issues with many tomatoes. Your best bet may be some of the early and even the "arctic" types developed for northern climates, or to grow them under glass or in cloches/tunnels.
Mad Ferret
Original Author
16 years ago
Fair enough, just what I noticed was that as soon as we got the dark evenings rolling in, the tomatoes started ripening.

I guess an experiment for next year is called for.
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caryltoo Z7/SE PA
16 years ago
Actually, I've heard that tomatoes do need a certain amount of darkness. Lots of people put their late, green tomatoes in brown paper bags to ripen. And our local Amish farmer says that for some reason they really start coming in after full moons.