Fretting about tomatoes not ripening...

I love gardening and over the years I have tried my hand at planting all sorts of vegetables herbs and flowers and just wanted to have one place for me to write about me and my gardening musings... so enjoy!

Here is one of my three tomato plants. I planted them in May and they've been growing at a nice steady pace ever since... started feeding them as soon as the first flower truss has set with small fruits. Fed the plants every week with a liquid tomato feed but we had a fairly warm August and while the plant foliage was plentiful and I had quite a few fruits popping here and there there was no sign of ripening, so I took some advise from the net and now I'm eating red tomatoes :)

Getting Them to Turn Red

TomatoeGardening.com say that the red color of tomatoes won't form when temperatures are above 86oF. So, if you live where the summers get quite hot, leaving tomatoes on the vine may give them a yellowish orange look. It's probably better to pick them in the pink stage and let them ripen indoors in cooler temperatures. They also advise that Tomatoes need warmth, not light, to ripen, so there's no need to put them on a sunny windowsill. Place them out of direct sunlight -- even in a dark cupboard -- where the temperature is 65 to 70F.

Another recommended method is to put unripe tomatoes on a shelf and cover them with sheets of newspaper. Every few days check under the newspaper and remove ripe fruits or any that have begun to rot. The newspaper covering helps trap a natural ethylene gas that tomatoes give off, which hastens ripening. Some people wrap each tomato individually, but this causes a lot of work when you want to check for ripe tomatoes: You have to open each one! You can also place tomatoes in a paper bag with an apple or banana. The fruits give off ethylene gas, which helps to speed the tomatoes' ripening process. Good luck!!

I love my tomatoes!