Ripen Tomatoes On The Window Sill
Tomatoes ripening on window sill.
Tomatoes ripen due to ethylene which is a gas they themselves produce when they are ripe. So a good alternative to hanging up your dead tomato vines to allow end of season tomatoes to ripen is to leave green tomatoes in an open space amongst already ripe tomatoes.
We have been able to ripen so many more tomatoes at the end of the season by using these 2 techniques. We hang up the tomato vines that need to be pulled out (for upto 6 – 8 weeks). Then once tomatoes on these hanging vines show the slightest bit of ripening we pull them off and leave them on a window sill with at least 1 ripe tomato so that the ripening process can complete itself.
We pull the ripening tomatoes off the dead vine as soon as they show any color so that the dying vine (which can look really dead, but is still working) can put it’s last effort into the greener tomatoes that still remain. Also best to pull off any really small tomatoes that are clearly never going to ripen and also any dead or shrivelled tomatoes as they too will just sap the plant of energy as it dies.
We find that the longer they take to ripen at the end of the season the less sweet they are. We tend to use them as sauce base for pastas or pizza base paste and if the sauce mix needs a bit of sugar to sweeten them up then we add a bit to flavour.
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