We have been very fortunate this summer with hardly any rain. For the first time in several years we actually had tomatoes on the vine. Now with an inch or more of steady drizzle I was motivated to get out and harvest as many toms as possible. We will do the grocery store ripening process. Some how some of my heirloom varieties are yellow when ripened. Many are already translucent so should ripen up OK. Am in the process of freezing those that are ripe and hopefully we have avoided the deadly split tomatoes. The kitchen and breeze way shelves are layered in tomatoes to ripen. Wish Mother Nature would have held out another week, but can't complain since I'm not willing to move to a drier climate or build a nice greenhouse. A few green tomatoes ( photo / image / picture from Jewell's Garden )
Wonderful. You will be doing what I have been doing lately. Jewell? How many plants did you put in? You're going to be happy this Winter.
Barb, I think I will just be freezing them and making salsa. We will be having a lot of them sliced wide sprinkled with taco type seasonings, cheese, crushed corn chips and baked. It's an easy meal that can use up quite a few tomatoes. I don't have your skills in canning. That is three plants worth. Netty, it's more tomatoes than I anticipated, but plenty for just the two of us.
KK NG, most should ripen just fine. Since many are an heirloom yellow variety many were much closer to ripening than I first thought. Very thin skins and have to go by how soft they are. Froze a few more today as they are ripening. Had some thick sliced tomatoes taco/cheese/chip covered yummy's for dinner. I am sure that after these are all gone we'll not be wanting fresh tomatoes for a while. The joys of eating produce in season. One year I packed green tomatoes in newspaper and kept in a cool room. Keeping a close eye on them and eating them as they ripened. The last tomato kept until about a week before Christmas. The skins did get a little tough though. ripe yellow heirloom tomatoes, some cooked with cheese, taco seasoning and crushed corn chips ( photo / image / picture from Jewell's Garden )
That is a lot of tomatoes for 3 plants! I hope they all ripen for you. Thanks for posting about the baked tomatoes also. They look so good that we are going to try them for sure.
Jewell, you said, "hopefully we have avoided the deadly split tomatoes." Is there some reason we shouldn't eat the split tomato? We just pour boiling water over, allow to sit a couple of minutes, peel and eat.
GP, processing the way you do should be fine if they are ripe, but many of mine were green. We aren't a couple who likes green tomatoes. If split tomatoes sit at all they tend to get extra protein from fruit flies. They also spoil easily since we never keep tomatoes refrigerated. We will be having fresh tomatoes prepared every which way for a while. Putting away a few as they ripen also.
