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Most of our country is located in the zone of risky farming. Heat-loving crops such as peppers, aubergines and tomatoes rarely produce full ripe fruits. Usually you have to shoot unripe, and sometimes completely green tomatoes. Experienced gardeners recommend picking fruits in blange ripeness, without waiting for complete redness, so that the plants have more strength for further fruiting. A special case is the mass disease of tomatoes with phytophthora. A harmful fungus can destroy a crop in a matter of days. Tomatoes collected from such bushes are likely to get sick.
Ripening tomatoes with signs of phytophthora
Green tomatoes collected from diseased bushes are placed in a plastic box with holes, for example, from under fruits, and poured for several minutes with hot water at a temperature of about 60 degrees, dried and left to ripen. You need to check them daily, removing the diseased.
With little damage, tomatoes can be used to make salads. There are many recipes for preparations with them.
In order for the removed tomatoes to be well stored and fully ripened, you need to pick them from the bush correctly and on time.
How to shoot tomatoes
- During the season, you need to harvest systematically, about once every 5 days, and more often in hot weather.
- Cut the tomatoes with scissors.
This must be done very carefully. The slightest damage will lead to rapid deterioration of the tomato.
- Picking time is in the morning, until the tomatoes are warmed in the sun. They must be dry, without dew drops. Tomato stalks do not need to be removed so as not to accidentally injure the fruit. Tomatoes ripen better with stalks.
- Low temperatures harm the fruits, causing them to rot. If the night temperature in the open field approaches plus 5 degrees, it’s time to remove all green tomatoes.
- In the greenhouse, the temperature limit is higher – plus 9 degrees.
How to ripen green tomatoes at home
There are several proven methods. The optimum temperature for ripening is from 13 to 15 degrees, humidity must be maintained at 80%.
Ways to ripen tomatoes
Traditional
Selected tomatoes of medium and large size are laid out in 2-3 layers in containers, for example, in boxes or baskets. To avoid condensation, the tomatoes are shifted with soft paper or sprinkled with sawdust. Reddened tomatoes are selected, spoiled ones are removed. To do this, they regularly audit containers with tomatoes.
On the bushes
In a barn or other adapted, but always warm room, tomato bushes are hung up, uprooted from the garden. Nutrients will flow from the roots to the top of the stem, contributing to the appearance of red fruits, but not only. Small tomatoes will gain weight and become larger.
You can do it differently – dig the bushes in a suitable warm room, maintaining a little humidity in the root zone. The effect of this method will be no worse than the previous one.
In a stack
With a large number of tomato bushes, we cut them at the root and put them in a pile. You need to put them with the tops towards the center. Its height is not more than 60 cm. We warm the stack with straw mats. To check and collect red fruits, we carry out an audit of the stack every few days, choosing warm weather.
If you maintain a temperature of about 15 degrees and a humidity of about 80%, the full ripening of tomatoes will occur in a maximum of 40 days. But there are ways to speed up this process without losing the quality of the tomatoes. How to make them blush faster?
How to accelerate ripening
To do this, you need to create the appropriate conditions for them. How to do it right? Tomatoes, especially those that are blanched, ripen faster when warm and exposed to light. Therefore, the best way is to put them on the windowsill, where sunlight enters. They blush well there.
Tomatoes are known to ripen well in the presence of ethylene gas. It is emitted by all ripe vegetables and fruits. You can increase the concentration of ethylene in the ripening zone of green tomatoes in the following ways:
- put a few completely reddened tomatoes to them, the rest of the tomatoes should ripen faster;
- add a couple of ripe bananas or red apples to green tomatoes, this will also allow them to ripen faster;
- inject 0,5 ml of vodka into each tomato; ethylene is released from ethyl alcohol inside a green tomato; the question of where to inject can be answered – best of all in the area of uXNUMXbuXNUMXbthe stalk.
Very often, gardeners seek not to speed up, but to slow down the ripening of tomatoes in order to extend the period of their consumption.
How to slow down the ripening of tomatoes at home
- In this case, tomatoes should be removed only green, but when they reach a size corresponding to the variety.
- Keep fruit boxes in a well ventilated area and out of light.
- The temperature for completely green fruits is about 12 degrees, for brown ones – about 6 degrees, and for pink ones – even less, about 2 degrees.
- Sorting and choosing ripe tomatoes should be done frequently and regularly.
- In the room where the fruits lie, you should monitor the humidity, it should not be higher than 85%, too low humidity is also bad, the fruits will simply dry out.
If the harvest of tomatoes did not have time to keep up with the vine, there is no need to be upset. Part of the tomatoes can be put into processing, and the rest can be fully ripened, providing them with the appropriate conditions. Ripe tomatoes do not differ much in taste and useful properties from those that have ripened on the vine. Well, greenhouse tomatoes cannot be compared with them.
