No, but I read the article a while back and was wondering the same thing!

Forgive my skepticism. I love to experiment with tomatoes but this "technique" makes me a little sick to the tummy and looks like a candidate for snopes.com. Storing ripe tomatoes for months just isn't my thing. I would recommend you get a dehydrator, for a safe process to store tomatoes as long as you would want to. You could always reconstitute them (link) :-)

I do not trust random wood ash and actually am afraid of it from unknown sources. But people eat it off grilled food all the time so that may be more a subjective judgement of risk open for debate.

I thought about this when it first came out and decided store bought gassed green tomatoes are already horrific so why would I want to do this to fresh garden grown tomatoes? Expect the good flavor to last 6 months? Unbelievable. Use ripe tomatoes? -Better be disinfected, and still any imperfection and they could carry disease.

If dehydrating isn't your thing (not mine either), you can store the whole tomato truss in brine topped with a layer of olive oil as the traditional Italian way. The following is from a 1902 Italian publication I translated a few years back (link):

Ingegnoli Tomato - New for 1902...Now that many are canning whole tomatoes for the winter, the
Ingegnoli variety is the best one that lends itself to this and here's
how it's done:

The whole fruits from the flower stem are put in a container (ed.
note, tin was available at that time though subject to corrosion made it
smart to use within 6-8 months or glass jar like now) with brine (water
saturated with table salt); then to prevent contact with air you pour
over them a layer of quality olive oil, about 1-2 cm thick that floats
on top of the brine (3/8 - 3/4 inch). Tomatoes preserved this way won't
lose much of their flavor, but before you use them, rinse them in fresh
water or else it will make the food too salty...

And finally there are long-keeping tomato varieties, like "Il Pomodorino del Piennolo del Vesuvio (link)" (Linda where are you?), the ones you hang from balconies and rafters over winter, which can be done with any tomato where bugs are not a problem but certain varieties excel at this having a good shell and strong connection to the truss, which at least are still connected to the plants as the stems dry out.

Wood ash is not magic and I decided this was not for me when I read carefully what the goal was: to have tomatoes to sell in winter. The goal wasn't flavorful tomatoes. So what is the scientific reason, if any, behind this. I think I know the trick, or at least can speculate. These tomatoes are picked green and stored separated with the wood ash, not allowing ethylene to cascade around them in the ripening process. Then the ethylene that is developed is absorbed by the char in the wood ash, along with the moisture. It makes a lot of sense to me. So my personal speculation about this is you basically can arrest a tomatoes' ripening process for a long time. Well, that doesn't change the fact that it is aging and will eventually mummify.

Where have we seen the above before? LOL The dreaded mutated RIN gene. Yes, this one is the mutant that commercial breeders introduced to get the tomato that is rock hard, green or blush and flavorless for a month until it becomes unappetizing. We all said, "Uggh" and ran for the hills accusing Big Ag of feeding us cardboard. But now "a brilliant entrepreneur from Burundi discovers under his banana plant" does a similar thing all the same people that hate big Ag, are charmed by an even grosser process.

I pass! But by all means try it safely if possible and report back :-) Just keep in mind he is doing it just to have something that evolves to resemble a ripe tomato, but nobody discussed what these to-mummy-oes taste like. They certainly will have a shriveled epidermides. And you certainly could get a few rotten, messy failures that will not be conducive to a good appetite. Do you think it will be as good as a gassed green and refrigerated commercial tomato 14 days old ... why should it ;-) And yes I think the entrepreneur is putting them in there green or turning, he just isn't letting the cat out of the bag with all his secrets!

And we haven't yet mentioned freezing whole tomatoes or heat canning :-)

Cheers

PC

I do have a dehydrator and that's what happens to a majority of the tomatoes I grow, because in my short growing season they all ripen in September and I have to preserve them quickly. I'm just going to try this with a few tomatoes out of curiosity and definitely won't eat them if they look strange at all.

I'm wondering if the wood ash simply prevents the tomato from being exposed to the compounds that encourage ripening? Would it be almost as effective to cover each individual tomato with a wrap? I have read that storing tomatoes stem side down slows down the ripening process.

I find this preservation technique curious. Because tomatoes self-destruct without any external factors. Everyone has sliced open an old tomato and found seedlings growing inside, and occasionally they even break through the skin. How does a layer of ash prevent that? Even if you kept the outside of the tomato sterile, decomposition would still be going on inside. It is, by the way, well understood that tomato tissue is rich in bacteria. I understand that depression on the fruit where the stem came off is an especially potent host for bacteria. So tomatoes aren't intrinsically sterile.

Call me skeptical.

BTW, ethylene is one of the products of wet wood ash. So if you're trying to keep a tomato from ripening and sprouting, putting a moist tomato in wood ash probably isn't a good idea.

I grew up in an isolated community of subsistence farmers and I never heard of it until today. They rigorously adhered to their own way of doing things but often talked of other ways and I don't recall it ever being mentioned.

Re stem side up or down, stem side down does delay ripening, but the shoulders of the tomato are the most delicate parts. So stem side down also promotes bruising. If you want your tomatoes to look nice, stem side up is the way to go.

It has been tested by several labs. Best results were only about 6 weeks. Noted also sand worked about the same. These were completely Ripe tomatoes. I image greener tomatoes would go months.

But honestly, un L ess you are craving a tomatoes sandwich. Don't do this ir a dehydrator. Tomatoes are the easiest vegetable to can. Due to the Acid content, they can easily in a non-pressure canner using a water bath. These will keep for a year or longer.

Want fresh? Use a grow light in the and keep a plant over winter.

Small-fruited plants produce a large number of tomatoes. Because small fruit have less skin to ripen than large tomatoes, they ripen faster. Small size and quick ripening are helpful indoors where there may be limited light. Most recommend a choose indeterminate tomatoes to grow indoors (grat for upside down growers). I only grow smaller sized determinant plants. Just easier with limited space. Dwarf and Cherry grow easiest such as 'Patio'. I recommend Heirloom Siberian which sets better in cool weather or Baxter earlier Bush though its about 20days longer to grow.