How to speed up tomato ripening process

Cold temperatures during autumn usually end tomato season. This is quite natural. As soon as temperatures go down significantly, you will notice that your tomato plants start withering and stop producing fruit. Even leaves will fall off eventually. The lowest temperature tomatoes can somehow tolerate is around 0.5°C. If the temperature is lower, tomatoes will die. Therefore, you should harvest before that but it is recommended that you should harvest all green tomatoes when the temperature is at least 10°C.

Harvest all tomatoes

Before the frost hits, you need to harvest all ripe and all green tomatoes. When you do, you can pull all tomato plants out of the ground. In this article we shall tell you how to speed up the ripening process.

• First, limit watering. Less moisture encourages fruit to ripen faster. Of course, your efforts may be interrupted by nature – if it is raining a lot, there is nothing you can do about it.
• Another way to speed up ripening is cut off unnecessary branches. Remove all dead leaves and cut off all new flowers as they will not have time to produce fruit and ripen. Harvest ripe fruit regularly. This forces the plant to focus on the remaining fruit which ripen faster.
• Cut off leaves and branches with flowers and small fruits so, that the rest of the fruit has time to ripen.

You can also choose to harvest all the tomatoes, even the unripe ones. Some may say that this method produces less sweet tomatoes. That may be true a little bit but once the tomatoes reach the ripening stage (when they turn from green to red), the flavour is locked in and you should be okay.

Photo: Pixabay

How to let tomatoes ripen

Place harvested tomatoes in a bowl where an indirect sunlight can reach it. To help them ripen, put tomatoes in a paper bag together with an apple or banana. These fruits release ethylene, which speeds up the ripening process. This effect also applies to flower arrangements but in the opposite way. So, if you want to keep cut flowers fresh as long as possible, keep apples and bananas far away from them.

Tomatoes wrapped in newspaper

You can also help tomatoes by wrapping them individually in newspaper and by placing them in a cardboard box. Store in a dry and dark place. This actually slows down the ripening process but makes it more gentle. It usually lasts three to four weeks.

Moving tomato plants indoors

Another option is to bring the entire plant with the fruit inside. A dry cellar or garage where the temperature is above 15 °C is best.Hang the plant upside down and you should be able to harvest throughout the autumn.

Source:

https://www.tomatobible.com/late-season-tomato-harvest
https://living.iprima.cz/zahrada/sezona-rajcat-je-v-plnem-proudu-podporte-jejich-urodu-ulozte-je-na-zimu

Preview photo: Pixabay