Anyone who read my post last week about my tomato surplus knows that I have an ungodly amount of green tomatoes that I am trying to ripen.
I will not lie to you and tell you I have a bunch of different methods – I have one method and it has a decent success rate. However, I wanted to share it because it really is such an easy way to try to get more tomatoes out of your garden in the fall before the frost kills them.
The paper bag method
All you need is a paper bag and a little patience. This method is extremely low effort which is why we love it here at SNTD.
What to do:
Place your green tomatoes in a paper bag, ideally with an already ripe fruit (apple, tomatoes, bananas, etc.) and close the bag. Check the tomatoes every day or so and pull out any tomatoes that are ripe and use them as you will.
I prefer to use a ripe apple if I have one because they don’t go bad in the bag. However, I didn’t have any on hand this year so I just used an already ripe tomato.
Why does the paper bag method work?
When a fruit is ripening it lets off a hormone that allows it to continue ripening. Trapping that hormone into the paper bag allows for tomatoes that are already ripening to trigger other tomatoes to ripen.
Also, tomatoes are a warm climate fruit. Once the temps get too cold outside, the tomatoes will stop ripening because the ideal temperature for ripening tomatoes is in the 70’s. Bringing the tomatoes inside in general will help the tomatoes ripen.
Once you attempt ripening green tomatoes inside, you will be able to get a good idea of what level of “green” tomatoes will actually ripen. Some tomatoes are still growing on the vine and were simply not finished growing and will not ripen inside before they start to go bad. The tomatoes that never start ripening inside are perfect for your compost!
If you want other methods for ripening tomatoes, check out this Farmers Almanac post!
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