It’s late August here in southern Ontario and normally canning is in FULL swing. It’s hot outside, hot in my kitchen and I sometimes weep at the site of more tomatoes. This year. however, things are very different than usual.
We started our growing season with a near flood-like situation. We had so much cold weather and rain that most of the commercial farmers around us didn’t have a hope of getting any crops in the ground until the end of June. We live in a growing zone 5a and this is almost unheard of in our area. We had our last fire in the woodstove in mid-June because it was still that cold outside. It rained for weeks on end and most of our crops got in very very late.
With such a cold and wet start, the hope was that we would then experience the normal blistering heat that Ontario gets during the summer. Temperatures into the mid to high 30’s (celsius) and humidity that made you dream of autumn. But alas, this has been far from the case. Last week we had a night go down to 7°C!! In August!!
The worry now is that we will also experience an early frost, which would be devastating for many of us who homestead and grow our own food. I have literally hundreds of green tomatoes on the vines and a pantry void of tomato sauce, diced tomatoes, salsa, pizza sauce… well pretty much anything that uses tomatoes.
So what is a homesteading gal to do?
Unfortunately, short of a greenhouse, there is no sure-fire why to ensure red tomatoes. But we DO NOT give up here! Here are my tips and tricks for encouraging your tomatoes to ripen on the vine.
And if you are in the opposite situation to us and overrun with tomatoes, try your hand at fermenting some cherry tomatoes.
Bye Bye Blossom
No I’m not talking about the totally rocking television show from the 90’s (am I right!?). I’m talking about those little yellow flowers on your tomato plants. If you haven’t already done this, pinch off all of your tomato blossoms as soon as you can. Those babies have zero hope of becoming tomatoes before first frost, so let’s not have the plant waste precious energy into an futile effort.
And While You’re At It….
Get rid of all those suckers too! Check out the picture below to know what a sucker looks like. As the name implies, this little green stems will bear no fruit and do nothing but suck energy from the plant. At this point we want our plant focusing on ripening fruit.
Trim a Little Off the Top
There are two main categories of tomato plants, determinant and indeterminate. Indeterminate tomato plants are basically vines and will continue to grow in height as long as the plant is alive. These are mostly what we grow and they are fantastic for trellising up and saving on space. At this point we are now trimming off the tops of our tomato vines, because just as I mentioned with the blossoms, nothing at the top of the plant has any hope of becoming a red tomato.
You are likely starting to notice a theme here – the main goal is to divert all of the plants energy to the fruit that is already grown on the plant. No more new leaves, no more new flowers and no more new fruit.
And a Little Off the Sides
While you are at it, you may as well trim off some of those tomato leaves too. Ideally you have been doing this all summer – pruning your tomato plant and removing some of the leaves. You don’t want to remove all or too much, as just like all plants, tomatoes need their leaves to produce food for the plant. But if you are overrun with tons of green leaves (that will also never produce fruit), you can trim some of those off now.
Last But Not Least
You can give your plant a nutritional boost. This can come in the form of:
- Epsom salts dissolved in water
- A strong comfrey tea (cooled before application)
- Homemade compost tea
- Liquid manure of some kind (sheep, goat etc.)
- Apply a natural store-bought fertilizer of some kind
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You can, of course, do a combination of these things. We will be making strong comfrey teas (which makes an amazing fertilizer in addition to being a wonderful medicinal plant to grow) and mixing it with a nice healthy scoop of Epsom salts (for added magnesium).
Worst Case Scenario
Keep an eye out for those weather reports. If you know frost is coming and you have the ability, you can wrap your plants in greenhouse plastic or some sort of protection. If you do not have the ability to do this, pick as many green tomatoes as you possibly can. While the flavour will not be the same as vine-ripened tomatoes, you can ripen them on your counter, in paper bags (my preference) or in the window sill.
You can also enjoy them as fried green tomatoes (just saying).
For those who like watching video instruction, check out my latest YouTube video on this very subject.
Good luck with your green tomatoes and may the odds be ever in your favour… and mine 😉
Regular Readers/Watchers
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