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Most of our country is in the zone of risky farming. Heat-loving crops such as peppers, eggplants, and tomatoes rarely yield fully mature fruits. Usually you have to shoot unripe, and sometimes completely green tomatoes. Experienced gardeners recommend removing fruits in blanche 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 late blight. A malicious mushroom can destroy crops in a matter of days. Tomatoes harvested from such bushes are likely to get sick.
Ripening tomatoes with signs of late blight
Green tomatoescollected from diseased bushes, placed in a plastic box with holes, for example, from under fruit and spilled for several minutes with hot water at a temperature of about 60 degrees, dried and left to ripen. They need to be checked daily, removing diseased ones.
For minor damage, you can use tomatoes for making salads. There are a lot of blank recipes with them.
In order for the removed tomatoes to be well stored and fully ripe, you need to pluck them from the bush correctly and in 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 quickly spoil the tomato. - Picking time is morning, until the tomatoes are heated in the sun. They must be absolutely dry, without dew droplets. 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 fruit, causing it to rot. If the night temperature in the open field approaches the mark of plus 5 degrees - it's time to remove all green tomatoes.
- In the greenhouse, the temperature limit is higher - plus 9 degrees.
How to properly ripen green tomatoes at home
There are several proven methods. The optimum temperature for ripening is from 13 to 15 degrees, the humidity must be maintained at 80%.
Ripening methods for tomatoes
Traditional
Selected medium and large sized tomatoes 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 shed or other adapted, but necessarily warm room, they hang tomato bushes, torn up from the garden bed by their roots. Nutrients will flow from the roots to the top of the stem, promoting the appearance of red fruits, but not only. Small tomatoes will gain weight and grow larger.
You can do it differently - dig in the bushes in a suitable warm room, maintaining a little moisture 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, cut them at the root and put them in a stack. You need to put them with the tops towards the center. Its height is no more than 60 cm.We insulate 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 tomatoes will fully ripen 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 more quickly?
How to accelerate ripening
To do this, you need to create appropriate conditions for them. How to do it correctly? Tomatoes, especially those of blanche ripeness, ripen faster in warmth and with access to light. Therefore, the best way is to put them on a windowsill where sunlight gets in. There they blush well.
It is known that tomatoes 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 several completely reddened tomatoes to them, the rest of the tomatoes should ripen faster;
- adding a couple of ripe bananas or red apples to green tomatoes, this will also allow them to ripen sooner;
- inject 0.5 ml of vodka into each tomato; ethylene is released from ethyl alcohol inside a green tomato; the question of where to give the injection can be answered - best of all in the area of the stalk.
Very often, gardeners do not strive 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 when green, but when they reach the size corresponding to the variety.
- Keep fruit crates in a well-ventilated area without access to 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 picking 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 tomato crop did not have time to ripen on the vine, you do not need to be upset. Some of the tomatoes can be used for processing, and the rest can be ripened, providing them with the appropriate conditions. Ripe tomatoes do not differ much in taste and useful properties from those that are ripe on the vine. Well, greenhouse tomatoes cannot be compared with them.
