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Green unripe tomatoes

The waiting game for ripe tomatoes continues… for how long?

This is a rather frustrating August, isn’t it? July lulled us into thinking that summer would just last forever, and we’d be running barefoot across the grass to pick endless melons and tomatoes and peppers. What a shock the next month has been. I still only have one tomato plant producing ripe fruits, and none of my heritage plants have given me anything yet.

unripe green tomato

Don’t get me wrong: when the harvest comes, it’ll be great. Just look at the fruits on my ‘Darby Pink-Yellow Striped’ from Organic Plant’s heritage collection. It’s not as if we’re going to be short of tomatoes this year.

unripe tomatoes

We have 11 tomato plants around the garden. Some are in pots on the patio, some are in the greenhouse, and some are in the companion-planted bed. At this rate, we’re going to be eating a lot of green tomato chutney, which is all very well and good (to be strictly accurate, it’s all amazing and superb). But I want fresh tomatoes. I want that real taste that you simply cannot buy in the shops. That’s what I want, not chutney, even though chutney has its place.

green tomatoes

To help the ripening along, I’ve cut back the leaves around the fruits. I also stopped the tomatoes by cutting out their lead shoot two weeks ago, so that the plant doesn’t divide its energies between fruiting and growing ever closer to the sky. I still need to pinch out the sideshoots as they emerge for the same reason. Some gardeners like to place banana skins under the plants, as bananas give off hormones that encourage maturing (which is why you shouldn’t keep your cut flowers near the banana bowl, as they won’t last as long).

If things get really close to autumn, I’ll take the vines from the plants and put them on a windowsill indoors to ripen. But there is just one thing that gives me hope:

green unripe tomatoes

Look. There, in the top left hand corner. That striped tomato is starting to turn gold. There might be hope. I won’t dig out my chutney recipe just yet.

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One Response

  1. Tom

    I grow tomatoes in a polytunnel so tend to have a slight edge on ripening compared to growing outside but this year for whatever reason we have yet to have many go red. We have gone for a beef tomato variety (Brutus) which is great for grilling. I hate green chutney so we tend to discard any unripened at the end of September.

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