Posted on 07/03/2009 4:00:47 AM PDT by Red_Devil 232
Good morning to all of you gardeners. I hope every one of you have a safe and Happy 4th of July weekend! Since just about everyone grows tomatoes in their vegetable garden I thought I would share some information I stumbled across concerning when to pick your tomatoes.
Every tomato lover knows fresh, “vine-ripe” flavor is by far the best.
At the same time, many don’t know what “vine ripe” means. So, whether growing or buying tomatoes, they may be limiting their access to the top flavor of the season.
Tomatoes develop their optimum nutrition, color and flavor when they’re in the full red-ripe stage. But getting to that point doesn’t have to occur on the plant.
Tomatoes go through specific steps in developing “vine ripeness”:
* A gas called ethylene regulates the ripening process. Tomatoes start producing this gas internally when they reach full size and become pale green.
* When tomatoes turn about one-half green and one-half pink (called the breaker stage), a layer of cells forms across their stem, sealing them off from the main vine. At this stage, tomatoes can ripen on or off the vine with no loss of quality or flavor.
* Tomatoes don’t ripen at refrigerator temperatures. If harvested in the breaker stage, however, keeping them in a cool place (to a minimum 50 F) will slow down their ripening process. Keeping them warm (to a maximum 85 F) will rapidly bring full ripeness. And, once ripe, they can keep for several weeks in the refrigerator.
This kind of control allows you to spread out the good eating over a longer period. A breaker-stage harvest also allows you to protect tomatoes from the heat extremes of summer. Tomatoes can’t form their red pigments when temperatures are above 95 degrees. They’ll still ripen, but they’ll end up a yellowish-orange.
Leaving tomatoes to ripen on the vine also increases the odds for cracking and other types of damage. Plus, it puts an increasing weight load on the viney plant.
I do that alot too, but I can’t stand the chiggers!
Umm grapes. I’m definitely making more jelly this year!
Freeze them until later!!!
Did just that. Used 1 teaspoon of potash in the 20 inch pots and added about the same amount of epsom salts and watered really well. Will be looking forward to see improvement in the next few days.
Yeah, but what do I do with them later?
Do you have a good source for these? I have some rare peppers I would like to try those on...
I grew tabasco peppers a couple of years ago and had so many I had no idea what to do with them all. Wound up stringing them by putting some serano, cyan, and some kind of cherry bomb peppers into a necklace-like arrangement and put them into the dehydrator. When they were done I decorated them with some dried herbs and gave them away for Christmas presents. I also put a few whole into small, fancy bottles along with some good olive oil and put ribbons on them. We didn’t have much money for Christmas, and since our extended family usually exchange home-made presents or food items, this went over well.
Very nice. I hate you. That is all. :)
Now you’ve REALLY inspired me to learn how to post photos from my own garden here.
The gauntlet has been thrown DOWN, LOL!
“I am going to be harvesting tomatoes for quite awhile - at least until it just gets to hot for them to set. But come late September they will perk right back up and I may have fresh tomatoes into early Nov.”
Would you adopt me? I don’t eat much, I can wield a mean hoe in the garden and I’ll keep my morning yodeling practice to a minimum; I promise! LOL!
Re: Your Habs.
Do you have a local Mexican Restaurant? In the years we grow them, we take them down to our local ‘Mr. Peppers’ and the guys use them in salsa (sparingly we for us Gringos) and other dishes. They always love to get them.
It’s also just a dern pretty plant! Pot a few up and bring them indoors for the winter (after a good spray with the hose and a little squirt of insecticide.) A sunny window will be just fine and you might get some blooms ahead of time to get a jump on the next season. :)
It blows my mind that pepper plants are perennials in the right growing zones.
They will be the host for the pictures you would like to post here. All the pictures I post here on FR I upload to Photobucket and then just use the code they provide to post here. Like I said very easy.
Keep them well watered and keep us posted! :)
Hey! Another thing we have in common! I can’t post pics either! LOL
I was thinking about having them printed and sending them to Red and letting him...
Never mind. :)
Beautiful maters and plants. Red. Even if I could post pics, all you’d be able to see of my garden is weeds.
Maybe I should do a weed id book and use my garden for the examples. Hmmm.....
I will be drying my Tobasco like I did last year!
I don't think I will be growing Habanero next year - beautiful plant and great abundant peppers - but I just can't use them. Just way, way to hot for me.
“Maybe I should do a weed id book and use my garden for the examples. Hmmm...”
Send me a copy when you publish that. You wouldn’t believe the number of ‘weed id’ questions I get in a day. *Rolleyes*
What do you care what it IS? It’s a freakin’ WEED. Kill it!
I identified two today, ‘Harebell’ and ‘Butter and Sugar.’ Both are very pretty but VERY invasive. The woman was SO disappointed as these ‘weeds’ had been in her family gardens for generations, LOL!
Fine. Transplant some from Granny’s garden and grow it. And I’ll see you in a few years when you BEG me for that bottle of Round-Up, LOL!
Guess what? All I want are some figs!
It probably was a stray seed in the Yellow Pear package,
but keep your eyes on it and save seeds from it if its’
a tasty TOM.
JJ61
It probably was a stray seed in the Yellow Pear package,
but keep your eyes on it and save seeds from it if its’
a tasty TOM.
JJ61
I started out using Jiffy peat pods too. However, like
many other gardeners i know, we've gotten away from using
them. They seem to either stay too wet or dry out to easily.
You too may find that cell trays with a good seeding mix
maybe the best way to go. I think that you might have less
seedling mortality's with cell trays.
JJ61
Great looking garden and yields.
I am aware of the Varieties of Marion and Arkansas Traveler,
or just Traveler as it was originally released as.
AT and Marion are both great for hear tolerance.
There are a few others varieties that are not coming to
my mind right now.
Feel free to post a topic question over at Tomatoville.
Many folks there will be happy to respond with their
knowledge and experience.
The one thing to remember, over at tomatoville, is that we
must lay off politics over there. The owner had to toss
a few liberal regulars a few years past. They could not
keep from turning threads into opportunities to bash Bush.
It's a Tomato centric website and politics is verboten.
JJ61
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