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Gardening

Picking tomatoes

(30 Posts)
Grandmabatty Sat 06-Aug-22 11:56:25

None of my tomatoes have turned red yet. I live in central Scotland and the plants by necessity were outside. Can I pick them green and let them turn indoors or am I being impatient?

Whitewavemark2 Thu 01-Sep-22 14:52:01

All mine are ripened, picked, eaten or frozen.

I live in the South

karmalady Thu 01-Sep-22 15:09:59

Shattered now, one thing leads to another in the garden. Two large vegtrugs emptied, liners were still surprisingly ok but I have replaced with new ones and completely renewed compost in one trug. 8 bags of john innes and one of grit as I am putting a mix of dwarf echineacea in and a couple of little lady lavenders, just planning ahead, to make like easier in a drought. Will be good for many years to come

I shall be using a good grobag on top of the older compost in the other trug, for the same outdoor tomatoes as this year. I grow 2 plants in a bag, in halos. Gone are the days when I had 19 outdoor tomatoes in halos in large buckets. I shall probably squeeze one sungold somewhere in the garden soil

Won`t be long now to autumn blight season, am happy to get my tomatoes inside to ripen

Greyduster Thu 01-Sep-22 15:16:03

I had my first two ripe cherry tomatoes this week! I photographed them and showed it to my DD. “Are you going to eat them?” She asked. I told her no, I’m just going to admire them!?. The others are starting to ripen now and we live in the north of England. I have standard outdoor tomatoes that are just getting their ripening act together too. Give yours time.

robertsilver Tue 10-Jan-23 09:41:30

Since am a little late on this, and that's yoyve got all the answers you need (be patient and wait a little longer), I can only add that it's still okay to harvest tomatoes much earlier before they're red. But you'll have to do this just as they are turning red, to which you can leave them to ripe indoors.

There's actually nothing with this, and the taste isn't different. It's just that it makes no difference because even the picked tomatoes might take the same period to ripen. This s early picking only works when you initially planted them outdoors and the weather is becoming cold (something tomatoes aren't great at) and thus you need to have them ripened up indoors. So yeah, be patient. But if there's need to pluck them earlier, it's okay. That's something I just had to clarify.

The good thing with waiting though, is that once the tomatoes have had their first ripening, you'll enjoy a longer harvest.