Adventures in ripeing of winter tomatoes

Its hard to believe its been 3 months since I last posted on my blog. Truth be told, this blog that I love writing and sharing so much has become the red headed step child. The "holiday season" for me and my crafts is crazy time! I'm working a 40 hr work week and then pouring concrete, sanding, painting many nights a week. I digress... its nice to back in the world of my sunny, grassy, fresh aired blog.

In Austin we are very lucky to have 2 separate tomato seasons! The spring tomato plants go in the ground ideally around March 15th. They grow and produce till about mid July. That's when its 104 out and everything just stops producing fruit. I pull those up early Aug, add compost and get my fall tomato plants in by the 1st week of September. Ironically, that's the hottest week of the year here - usually in the high 100 - 110. For this reason, I sometimes just cant torture my lil plants in that hot sun and I wait till mid Sept.

In this 2012 fall its been rather warm. Today is Dec 18th and its 83 out! About a week ago, we had our first cold front and it hit 30 degrees. It was sad to have to harvest all my green tomatoes but its what must be done. Ya know how your not suppose to put tomatoes into your fridge because it ZAPS the flavor ... well, covering your tomato plants with towels is kinda like the same thing. Just pick em before they freeze!

The Fall Plants in Dec 2012 

I had 3 plants that I got from Red Barn Nursery off Pondsprings Road. They were pretty tiny when I started but grew at least 3-4 ft each and produced about 15 tomatoes each. Overall, a great harvest!

Green Tomato Harvest 

Washed and Laid Out

There are many different methods of ripening green tomatoes into pretty reds! Feel free to Google search all the other methods - everyone seems to think they all work pretty well. There is even advise to do nothing to them and they will ripen on their own!

I decided to go with the method of wrapping each tomatoes and placing them in a dark box at room temperature.

Wrap it Up

Filled it up to the top! 

I got the cutest little box set at Ikea that was perfect for this project and since the tomatoes have to be checked every few days, it helpful that its cute to keep out on the counter top!

I love owls! 

After I wrapped up all the green tomatoes individually, I put them in the owl box and closed the top. It sat on my counter for the past week and today I checked in on them!

And look! They are almost orange!

After 1 week

From what Ive read, these will ripen over the next two weeks. I will continue to check them and post anything exciting! Once everyone is pretty and red, I'm going to make a HUGE batch of marina on can it all for the winter!