A Gardeners Forum Forums Gardening Reference Gardening in 2003 Green Tomatoes that won't turn red!

Help!
I'm a first-time gardener and all I want is some yummy tomatoes. I have countless green tomatoes on the vine but they will not turn red! They've been large and green for weeks!

The end of the season is rapidly approaching. (I live at almost 7,000 feet in the foothills of Colorado). Does anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks so much,
Dave

Welcome to the garden helper Dave. I don't have your answer, but I am sure someone will. I just wanted to say Hi! Check back with us often, we are a friendly bunch of folks.

Well Hello Dave,
Welcome to The Garden Helpers Forum!!
I'd like to let you know we have a wonderful
bunch of gardeners here, first time gardeners and everything up to the Master Gardeners.
Everything inbetween.... Everyone of us has a passion for growing something... I hope you'll stick around and join our growing group here.
And add your voice to the questions and answers and give some of your trials and triumphs in gardening!!!

I have some questions for you???
How tall are your plants/??
I'm thinking they are probly as tall as they're going to get and do as much producing as you're going to get. What I would do if they were my tomatoes is........ I'd look them over and figure out the top, the growing stem and give it a quick little snip, right at the top...............
What that says to the plant is.........
"Get your butt going and ripen the fruit
because I have to make seeds because my
growing tip is gone." Does that make sense???
The plant can then concentrate on ripening fruit, not growing! And this should have you seeing a peach color in your tomatoes real soon!!

Hope this helps!! Happy Gardening!!
Weezie

P.S. I have alot of relatives in Colorado!!!
My Uncle lives in Denver, (he used to live in Golden and Boulder) and cousins in West Minster,
Littleton, Englewood, and I have another cousin that lives in Boulder!!!!!!! What a small world!!

mine took for ever to ripen this year too.
if you run out of time pick them and wrap them in newspapers and store in a dark place they will ripen they might not be quite as good a vine ripened but alot better than store bought.

Iowa,
That's a good one too!!
I had thought about that later,
I was going to tell him if it got too~too~too late to do that, or pull the stems off or the whole plant ****IF**** you have room in your back mud room or something of the likes to HANG them!!! Gives them the effect of still being on the vine. (Room temp for ripening, Cool temp for storing.........)
It will give them a slight bit better chance of some good tastin' ones.....
Sometimes when mine are yellow/orange and I want them to start ripening I'll get that first one off and bring that into the house and paper bag it or just a saucer with a few folded paper towels. (I do that for flower seeds too!!!)
Hope this helps!
Weezie

Interestingly enough, I tried the paper bag trick. Took three green ones and put 'em in a paper bag and after a week there was no difference.

In addition, they have started to split up near the stem. More worries!

Thanks again,
Dave

Dave,
That's usually water...
Tomatoes need a steady amount of water,
then all of a sudden you get a down pour of rain
and all of a sudden the tomato said,
hey, that's too much water and can't grow fast enough to accomadate the added water intake.
(my tomatoes talk to me all the time, LOL)

Put some bricks or stone around your planting area...... that'll get some heat into the area. My mother told me,
it's something to do with the daylight??????
But I'll have to do more reading on it.

Keep us posted!!!!!!

tomatoes need a certain amount of day light hours and as the days get shorter and fall approches they just kinda know that their season is over. i wonder why the paper bag did'nt work?
i never thought of hanging them that is a good idea, i am going to try it. my plants talk to me too, they all do if you are listening.

Yummy! Fried green tomotoes. Word of caution don't eat too many at a time....been there, done that...NOT A GOOD FEELING !!!!! Ha Ha!
Catlover (I can't get over this little guy, love him)

Catlover,
Got any recipes for Fried Green Tomatoes????
Weezie

Not really just the plain ol dunk in flour, salt and pepper...fry in oil/butter. Calories galore but I love them.
P.S. Weezie know about typing a book and then using too many graemlins. POOF BE GONE. Maybe there should be a place in the box that shows how many are allowed. I know it shows after it goes POOF but to late then.

Catlover, 8 graemlin limit! (it's in the little box now) Thanks Bill!!
I've lost some long posts that way, too! (Gives me more typing practice :rolleyes: )

When I make fried green tomatoes, I use a mixture of cornmeal and flour (a little over 50% flour) with salt and pepper added in. I dip my tomatoes in beaten egg first, then coating.
I don't eat fried green tomatoes , but the people I cook them for love 'em!


Nikkal

Nikkal I'll have to try that next time(next year). What do you fry them in?
Catlover

First of all, you need to cut back on watering. It will do two things: prevent tomato fruits from splitting and help the fruit to mature if not ripen on the vine.

Harvest green tomatoes just before the first frost. To ripen, see Weezie's suggestion on hanging the tomato vine. If you use paper bag(s), try putting a couple of ripe bananas or green apples with the tomato fruits...they will help in the ripening process.

Tomatoes that didn't start to ripen on the vine will never ripen, no matter what ripening method you use. This is probably why the paper bag trick didn't work for you.

Next year, try to use tomato variety that mature in 80 days or less (most tomatoes require about 120 days). If at all possible, select plants that are recommended for "high altitude".

Papito,
Just got to thinking the other day,
would having a raised bed help this situation?
Even at a high altitude????
I have heard so much about raised beds, and have
done raised bed vegetable gardening for the last
2 years now...... It's worked great for me and my
mom especially at planting and havesting time.
I also planted my tomatoes very late this year
(about the middle of June actually, no lie, the celebraties were the last variety I planted about the second week in June)And I am havesting huge amounts of tomatoes for such a late, late start, I have NO complaints.......
I got to thinking if it would help someone at a higher altitude, Jusy curious!!!!!!!

3 years ago i grew some tomatoes in a hanging basket...yes thats correct hanging basket complete with marigolds on top.i bought the plants(2) and stuck head first through the bottom drain holes& planted some orange gem marigolds on top.i did it cause my neighbor did it was with a type called highboy suppose to be lower in acid.it looked really neat.she said she seen on HGTV.i watch HGTV and have not seen yet so who knows but wa sure neat,she had the yellow flowers but orange looked good too
never knew about about the cutting tip.i got some growing by accident.i tossed some tomato slices out in our road when doing all the watermelon that has not sprouted and have a plant growing has blossoms& tomatos both on plant is actually 2 plants close together& if they don't turn in time i may dig her pot her bring her inside to window.
hey....can ya overwinter tomatos for next season the plants?I've done my jalpeno peppers this way.hubby probably kill me though...told him would not have 70+ plants indoors this year

Weezie,

Raised bed at high altitude? Maybe. It certainly would raise the soil level depending on how high the bed rise from the ground.

Here are some of the gardening problems at high altitude.

*Very short growing season

*Sun shines much stronger, plants can dehydrate and wilts because they can not tolerate long exposure to heat

*Heat dries up soil moisture to a depth of 4" to 6".

*Wide temperature variations (low 40s to high 90s degrees F) either extreme temp. range can kill plants

*Soil tends to be alkaline (salty) from lack of water (from rain that naturally should wash off (leach) excess salts), pH is above neutral(+7.0)

* That means nutrients are trapped and unavailable to the plants.

*Most veggies, like tomatoes, thrive best on slightly acidic soil at pH range of 5.5 to 6.8

Additional info on high altitude gardening can be found in the following link.

http://home.earthlink.net/~tillerbee/index.html

Papito,

Raised beds for them probly might work but then maybe they'd need some type of drip irragation???

My raised beds are exactly as the conditions you stated!! They do tend to dry out faster, which is
a bonus only in rainy seasons... (since we put mine up we haven't had one yet that was too much!)

They could do the raised bed with some type of
/???? all's I can't think of is like a clothe that looks like landscape fabric, to cover their bed, I was thinking of trying something to that effect for mine next year. I have 3 different types of landscape fabric and we had a disscusion on that a bit ago.....
https://www.agardenersforum.com/old/ubbthreads.php/ubb/nolongerexists?ubb=get_topic;f=3;t=000077
Some of my beds where in the front, with alot of hot sunshine on them, and since they do tend to dry out faster, did get some sunburn. So, I was dreaming up some kind of contraption or something
I could drape over to shade during the day.

*They could also us a chopped pineneedle mulch for their soil???? That might solve some problems of sun/heat evaporating water, keeps moisture in.
And leach some of the acid needed by the tomatoes.
And good for the soil.
(only problem is when you should rotate crops, the
next may not want such conditions. Especially if space is limited.)

*?*You wrote nutrients may be trapped and unuseable for the plant, how would one untrapp them? What could one put in the soil to correct that problem? And how would one apply it, on top, in to it and rototill, dig holes and make pockets for it to go in to???
We had a post about that too earlier,
I can't find it right now, we were talking about him putting in pelletized lime I believe and something else, OH, I think it was calcium.???? I'll look for it later.....

I have to go pick up the little girl I watch, I'll be back!!!
Weezie
P.S. I'm going to send that web site to my Uncle, he lives in Denver!!!!

Weezie,

The primary nutrients are Nitrogen (N), Phosphorus(P) and Potassium (K), also known as NPK.

The secondary nutrients are Calcium, Magnesium and Sulfur.

The micronutrients (sometimes called trace elements) are Zinc, Iron, Manganese, Copper, Boron, Molybdenum, Cobalt, and Chlorine.

These nutrients becomes available to the plants as dissolved salts.

The presence or absence of Nitrogen (N) regulates the plant growth.

For example, the absence of Nitrogen in the fertilizer mix, means the application of this mix is to promote flowering and fruiting.

On the other hand, the presence of Nitrogen, especially in large amounts means that you want the leafy growth on plants...it is good for lettuce, but not for tomatoes.

Weezie (post dated 3 Oct 03) on raise beds.

My 2 cents:

After preparing your soil, wouldn't it be more practical to lay out the black landscape fabric to cover the entire raised bed, make slits in the fabric where you want to plant your vegetables?

Positive side on using black fabric.

Effective as mulch.
Retains soil moisture.
Prevents weeds from coming up.
When watering, no soil splashes, water go to the slits where your plants are.

Negative: The lawnscape fabric tends to raise the soil temperature.

As for the shading the beds to prevent "sunburn", how about a moveable "A" tent made of wood & black landscape fabric or a tall plants in containers to partially block the sun?

I did,
I covered all of the beds, 5 of them,
raised beds/landscape fabric
And they aren't designed alike. As mentioned in post... I'm working on that too!!

But like you said, bad point, it raises the temp.
And with it being a raised bed, the temp. is already elevated, the black color draws the heat.
I proble could do drip system, but I am not able to afford that, mother could but won't!!
We like rain water anyways, I collect it in barrels on the side of the house.
But can't and am not always fast enough in the morning to get them watered.
(Kids and husbands off to work before that stuff gets done, go figure the nerve of those people!!
BIG GRIN!! )
That's why I had been thinking of some kind of cover for the beds.
https://www.agardenersforum.com/old/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=000677#000000
Nikkal and Lefse had been working on a design for a cover for my beds, for frosts, and was thinking of something that could be removeable, detachable, addable ???? Not sure what, but something to cover all.......
Even when the bugs are stating, with a white row cover, I'm on to something, just can't really get too a complete, affordable solution.....
We got cucumber beetles, not toooooo bad this yr actually, but still, one is toooo many for me.

I'll get something figured out. Alot mostly is the money, of course. Plus we are adding on two more raised beds next spring I think, so we've got to figure something out.??????????

Weezie

Weezie,

Vegetable Protector (info.)

http://www.shade-cloth-diy.com/plant-nursery/plant-nursery.shtml

Papito,
That's an awesome idea!!!
I took a peak at the other ideas too,
those are some good ideas!!!!!!
I liked the lean~to shade cloth.
Nice!

Now, my next project is to
talk my mother into it,
Although, it's usually every year
hers are the ones that get sun burnt.

Thanks for hunting that info down for me.
I apreciate it!!
I'll bet someone can get some
good mileage out of it too!!!

Weezie

Just wanted to update y'all on the original topic: My stubborn green tomatoes. It is now close to freezing at nite and many of the greenies have turned orange... almost reddish. They are yummy!

I also took a couple vines and hung them inside in the dark and they have turned a very pretty red.

Last nite it dipped below freezing so this morning I chopped off most every vine left and hung them all in the closet. Hoping for the best!

Thanks for all your help.

-Dave

PS: so, here's the next question. Can I take my basil plant from outside, stick in in a pot & move it inside? Hmm.....

Hi Dave,
I'm not too sure of an answer on that,
but I'm willing to bet Papito might be able to
give you a good answer,
But I'd also suggest that your re~ask
this particular question, believe it or not,
in the house plants section....
Maybe Will Creed could also give you
some pointers as far as house living
for that type of plant.

Also, I'm making a good bet our Head Gardening Guru, Bill could also give you a very good answer to this question as he does both indoor and outdoor gardening.

I'd probly say it would need some good lighting...
Hope some of this info helps.
Weezie