Golightly gardens « Penny Golightly

Penny Golightly and the Green Tomatoes That Would Not Ripen

October 23rd, 2011 by Penny Golightly

Last year I grew a few tomato plants and they were tasty so this year I grew a few more. I went for more varieties this time round, but they nearly all ended up with the same thing in common – the tomatoes wouldn’t ripen (apart from the Yellow Pear toms which I’ll certainly be growing again next year).

It was mainly down to two things. Firstly I didn’t plant out some of the tomato seedlings until July so they didn’t all get the chance to get up to speed. Secondly the summer didn’t have enough sun until it was kind of too late.

I did eventually get most of these stubbornly green tomatoes to ripen, so here are a few tips if you find yourself with the same problem.

If your green tomatoes are still on the plant, there are two main things you can do:

1. Move tomatoes in pots or growbags so they’re in the sunniest and warmest spot in the garden.

2. If your tomatoes are cordon tomatoes (also called vine tomatoes, or indeterminate tomatoes) rather than bushy/determinate tomatoes, you might need to limit their growth so they put their efforts into growing and ripening fruit instead of growing lots more leaves and stems. Nip out sideshoots with your thumb and forefinger when you see them starting to form, and also ‘stop’ the plant (usually done in August) once it’s formed for or five trusses (bunches of tomato flowers) by nipping out the top of the main vine.

If the green tomatoes are fully formed but they just won’t ripen, you can remove some of them from the plant to ripen separately. There are a couple of things to try, but avoid putting them all in a closed greenhouse on a sunny day as they’re more likely to cook and rot than go red.

Things to try if they’re already picked:

1. Pop them onto a windowsill and check them every couple of days.

2. Put them into a drawer/cardboard box/paper bag with a ripening banana. It gives off a gas that’s supposed to kick start the ripening process.

You might still end up with a few that stay stubbornly green. If that happens, cook them up. You can make fried green tomatoes, green tomato salsa (look for recipes that use tomatillos and use green toms plus a pinch of sugar), or green tomato and date chutney.

And of course there’s next year to think about.

Next year I’ll remember not to choose everything from the late ripening category. I’ll plant at least a couple of varieties that naturally ripen mid-season, and at least one tomato that does well in relatively cold weather. You can easily find this information out by looking at online seed catalogues from the big manufacturers.

After reading around the subject a bit, I think I’ll avoid the ones that ripen incredibly early though as they sound kind of watery and flavourless. If it isn’t tasty, it isn’t making the list.

Do you have any handy tomato tips to add?

Tags: Golightly gardens, grow your own veg, how to get green tomatoes to ripen, how to ripen tomatoes, kitchen garden, seasonal vegetables, what can I do with green tomatoes
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Kitchen garden catch up

July 5th, 2010 by Penny Golightly

Here’s a quick catch up for what happened with the windowsill kitchen garden last month. First of all, the cherry and plum tomatoes set their first trusses and gave us some tiny toms. The cherry tomatoes ripened quickly and lived up to their tasty reputation, giving us about 14 tomatoes between two plants with more still to come.

The plum romas are not quite there yet, so I can’t tell you if they’re as good as people say. We’re still getting 2 or 3 French beans each week from the dwarf bean plant, and the cut and come again salad pot containing land cress, rocket and baby leaf spinach is on its third round. I’m also sowing sequentially in little pots to make sure we have fresh supplies of parsley and basil.

The cucumber plant went outside. It is very healthy and has given us three chunky cucumbers during June. Here’s what it looked like last month:

People say you should peel outdoor cucumbers to remove the tiny spines, but I’ve found that giving it a scrub with an ordinary pot scrubber does the trick perfectly and with the minimum of waste – the skins are completely edible that way. The baby lettuce round the bottom of the pot helps to retain water, and the peas seem to be helping the cucumber and lettuce grow stronger too. Three crops in one pot, quite handy for a small garden with almost no topsoil.

The courgette not only got too big for the windowsill, it outgrew the mini greenhouse too. Here’s what it looked like in June, when it started giving us two green courgettes per week. It hasn’t stopped since. The small flowerpot is sunk into the compost, which sends water straight to the roots on hot days, rather than evaporating off. We should be OK if the proposed hosepipe ban happens at least.

I did originally say that I wasn’t going to grow potatoes because it’s very hard to make it cost effective – it’s my first year here and there’s no home made compost, and the combination of large container, bought compost and seed potatoes usually works out as more expensive than buying the spuds in a shop. Fortunately I was given some free seed potatoes and a potato grow bag by Beau’s Mum, who had a spare set after a bulk buy:

This is what they looked like directly after their final ‘earth up’. I’m looking forward to a bumper crop of Charlotte salad potatoes some time during July, and there’s also a way to recycle this year’s compost by sowing enriching plants in it during the Autumn and letting it overwinter, so there should be very little waste.

Quite a lot of people have given me free seeds or done swaps with me, so there’s plenty to try out this year, including a pot of borlotto and runner beans, and some rocket. Here they are as baby plants:

I’m also making good use of the things that we find, Womble-stylee, things that the previous folks left behind. This includes a shed full of pots, planks, perspex sheets, plastic window boxes and hanging baskets. The window boxes turned out to be good for lettuces, rocket, radishes, round carrots, pak choi and mini cabbages. Not sure how the turnips and beetroot are going to turn out, we’ll see at the end of July.

All the hanging baskets needed was a water reservoir and a £1 pack of gel retainer liners and hey presto, salad bowl hanging baskets with lettuce, chicory, spring onions, and edible marigolds and trailing nasturtiums: