Howe can you tell when tomatoes are ripe enough to pick and let finish indoors?
And what conditions do they need?
I started bringing my tomatoes inside to ripen, with great success. I would bring them in when they started to show a blush of color. I put them on the kitchen counter in a low-sided cardboard box or on a cookie tray lined with newspaper. I read somewhere NOT to put them in a window & from experience, they don’t need sun to ripen at that stage. Our house was air conditioned so in the 70’s. The tomatoes ripened up beautifully, still tasted great and no bugs, birds taking hunks out of them, etc.
One year, I brought in a bunch of green tomatoes before a freeze was forecast that night. Several of the larger ones ripened - I have a picture of a ripe red tomato in my hand early December, with snow in the background!
Pete! Ping to Post #823.
Metmom: Pete does this, so I pinged him for you. At the end of the season I take whatever mature GREEN tomatoes I have left and wrap them in newspaper, put them in a cardboard box and keep them in my pantry/laundry room (unheated, but still stays in the 60’s) and check them for ripeness each week and use them as they ripen.
I don’t have a problem with critters stealing ripe tomatoes, so I leave mine ripen on the vine.
Qiviut has covered this thoroughly. You do not need sunlight to ripen them. If you want to hurry ripening you could put them with bananas, which give off ethylene gas and helps them (and a lot of other things) to ripen.
At the end of the season you can pull up any tomato vines that remain, remove the roots and hang them upside down in your basement or garage. Put a box or something underneath to catch any ripening tomatoes. Usually by the end of the year I am tired of tomatoes so probably will not do this again.