questions about tomatoes, for you more experienced gardeners

[chhotii]

Why do tomatoes split? Even ones that aren't ripe at all? They seem to do this when we get a metric buttload of rain, but baby duty keeps me out of the garden for such long stretches, I'm not 100% sure of the correlation. What can be done to prevent this?

When do we expect to get frost in the Boston suburbs? How much cold can tomato plants tolerate at the harvest end of the season?

Is it worthwhile to pick your homegrown tomatoes green if you don't think they will make it? Does the paper bag and banana trick work for ripening tomatoes? What if the tomatoes hadn't grown to full size yet? Isn't it the case that allowing tomatoes to ripen on the vine is one of the motivations for growing tomatoes-- that if we wanted tomatoes that were picked green, they have plenty of those at the grocery store? Any suggestions for using green tomatoes? I have heard good things about fried green tomatoes, but I should not be eating that much fat.

Overnight temperatures aren't expected to go below 50 for the next week at least. How much should I be kicking myself for panicking and picking most of the green tomatoes?

Comments

[quietann.livejournal.com]

I don't know a lot more than you, but...

The tomatoes will keep ripening until the first frost, at which point you pretty much have to pull everything out and start again next year. However, with the current weather they are going to ripen verrrrryyyyyy slowly, so you may not have done a bad thing by picking the green ones. First frost around here is normally mid to late October, but everything is late this year.

People make relishes and sauces out of green tomatoes, but I don't know much about that.

I don't know why they split. Some varieties split more than others (e.g. my Sweet 100s barely split at all until this week, but about half of the Isis Candy heirlooms split.)

[jbsegal.livejournal.com]

A quick google on the quoted phrase "why do tomatoes split" yielded:

Q: Ken of West Allis - Why do tomatoes split on the end of the vine ? What can I do to prevent this from happing.

A: Sharon Morrisey - Ken, The following is from the "Fruits and Vegetables" page of the Hort Team website. There are photos there, too. Growth Cracks Two types of growth cracks affect the stem end of tomatoes: concentric and radial. Concentric cracking produces circular cracks around the stem end of the fruit. Radial cracks spread outward from the stem scar. These cracks typically appear as the fruit matures. Growth cracks often appear when conditions drastically change the rate of growth, such as wide fluctuations in temperature and moisture. Dry weather followed by heavy rains causes radial cracking in many tomato cultivars. Cultivars vary in their ability to withstand cracking depending on the strength and "stretchability" of the skin. Very susceptible cultivars will crack while still green, those that are somewhat resistant often don’t crack until the fruit has reached the breaker stage. The earlier the fruit cracks, the deeper the cracks become. High nitrogen and low potassium are often implicated in fruit cracking and therefore, proper plant nutrition and adequate, regular irrigation will reduce the likelihood of growth cracks. Good luck.

[jbsegal.livejournal.com]

Oh... and I love pickled green tomatoes...

[radioactiverich.livejournal.com]

Hey, we can try using up all those stubby little carrots and split green tomatoes in a pickle relish batch! Is that called picalilly?

[donnad.livejournal.com]

The piccilli I make uses green tomatoes, cabbage, onions and green peppers, much vinegar and spices. The recipe came from my grandmother. Never heard of putting carrots in piccililli!

[marmota.livejournal.com]

From what I remember of growing tomatoes, which dates back to when I was still living at my parent's house, they don't crack if you keep them regularly watered... but from what jb just posted, a torrential rain is still more than they would be used to dealing with so they'd crack from that anyway.

[donnad.livejournal.com]

I make green tomato relish (AKA Piccililli) from green tomatoes. I would be happy to share the recipe if you are up to doing some canning.

[mycroft.livejournal.com]

Well, you hit upon it yourself. They crack when they're overwatered -- it causes the flesh to grow faster than the skin, and the pressure bursts the skin open.

A more important question is how to prevent that, but I don't have an answer for that.

[skreeky]

Well you have your answer, above.
Incidentally, cherries do the same thing. This is why the people (mostly fruit farmers) my parents socialize with drive me CRAZY CRAZY CRAZY because they talk incessantly about rain, whether they're getting enough rain, or too much rain, or when it might rain too much, or whether to pick before it rains, or...

Ayup. You get the idea. Now you can chat with farmers knowledgeably. Aren't you thrilled?

For some reason, it's not nearly so boring when vintners do the exact same thing about their bloody grapes. Must be the European accents.

[tb]

The splitting question has been answered; the flesh swells up when they get too much water at once and the skins split. We just had a bunch of rain after a fairly long dry spell.

First frost around here is usually mid-October, but I've seen it as early as the end of September. This year it has indeed been late: even the summer house in CNY hasn't had a frost yet, and it's in Zone 4 (we're in 6). Even though you could have left stuff on the vine for a little while longer, this chilly and damp weather would not have given you much additional ripening, and this way you don't have to rush out for a forced-march panic picking in the dark just before the first frosty night (been there, done that).

If tomatoes show any sign of color, they will ripen off the vine, and sometimes even if they are totally green, but not if they are very small. Garden-grown tomatoes ripened indoors will still taste better than supermarket tomatoes (aka red billiard balls), though they won't be as tasty as the ones that ripened on the vine in warm weather.

There are all sorts of methods for ripening tomatoes indoors: you can try the paper bag plus banana trick, or wrap them in individually in newspaper (both of those make it a bit harder to remember to check on them), or just put them out on a tray somewhere not too hot or cold and rotate them every few days to look for soft spots. If you do get a soft spot, you can watch to see how far it progresses vs. how ripe the rest of the tomato gets and use it before the whole thing rots. Just remember that the part of the tomato that will taste bad is larger than the actual visible rotten spot.

Here's one of many URLs talking about ripening and dealing with green tomatoes, including piccalilli and other recipes; Google is your friend.