Post your pics of your silly harvest stuffs! Here are tomatoes!

[SeaChick]

We had one like those in the second pic and Olivia named it "Fred". He finally got eaten, and she was sad....

You got frost already in WA? I thought we had it bad here in Maine but we're frost-free so far. Good thing, cuz we have lots of green tomatoes as well!

 

[wegotchickens]

I'm going to try digging up my plants and moving them to the screened-in porch. I know someone who raised tomatoes until Thanksgiving this way, since we get frosts but not freezes and the porch protects from frost. We'll see if it works for me.

Can't store the green tomatoes. DH is already freaked out that sweet potatoes have to be 'cured'. We've nevr grown them before but the vines are REALLY happy so I'm hoping we have lots of sweet taters for the winter. DH hates storing things. He thinks we should never buy more than a week's worth of groceries at a time...

 

[SpottedCrow]

They wrap green tomatoes to ripen because they give off carbon dioxide to make them red.

Silkie, does you soil glow in the dark too?

 

[Buff Hooligans]

Silkie, I was going to ask if you lived near a nuclear dump site...

On a side note, my neighbor gave me some heirloom tomato seedlings, one of which was called "Bloody Butcher". This was just a few weeks after I put my little pampered pullets in their run next to the garden. Needless to say, I planted the "BB" tomatos as far away from them as possible.

 

[DrakeMaiden]

I get a lot of the first type, but none of the rest. Sometimes I get tomatoes that are siamese twins (two that grew together in one spot).

Average first frost date in the Seattle area is Halloween. Not sure if Silkie lives up in the foothills of the mts. though.

I've tried both wrapping my green tomatoes in paper towel and not wrapping them. I prefer not wrapping them, just because I'm more likely to spot ones that go south before the whole bunch goes with it. Unwrapping them all is a bit of a chore. I thought it was ethylene gas that causes ripening. Anyway, like justusnak says, there's nothing like pulling out a ripe home-grown tomato for Thanksgiving.

I've also heard you can cut off the vines and store them in a cool spot (in a hanging position) and the tomatoes will ripen like that. Haven't tried it though.

 

[arlee453]

Hanging the vines works. My dad used to hang his vines down in the basement from the roots when the first frost happened. We'd have good tomatoes through december...

Susan

 

[DrakeMaiden]

Thanks Susan, I'll have to try it!

 

[Royicus]

Silkiechicken darn near lives in a nuclear waste site...

Everybody in town has tumors!


Those tomatoes are very phallic. Excuse them!

 

[silkiechicken]

Oh, no. No frost here yet. It will be about a month before that, just before Halloween like DM said... but last year it hit a bit earlier than expected when temps were not predicted to be freezing and everything turned black and died. It was too late to save the hundreds of tomatoes still hanging off the vines.

And tomatoes don't give off CO2.. only at night do any plants give off co2, while respiration occurs in the mitochondria without sunlight keeping the chloroplasts active. And since a tomato is a fruit... it doesn't respire like leaves do. It has no stomata. Like peaches and other fruits though, ethylene gas is released as it ripens. Which is why your too hard to eat peaches turn to mush overnight when placed too close to the bannanas... that's idea.... *places the brown bannana in the tomato closet*

The soil doesn't glow but that would be pretty cool. I've got a few thousand hanging and sticking glow in the dark stars in my room though!

I'm going to try multiple methods this time. I'll pick off all the green one from a few plants and store them in a box like I've been doing. Then I'll dig up a few plants and put them in planters on the sidewalk against the house. Then I'll take a few whole plants and hang them. Then I'll take the effort to wrap a box of tomatoes and see how that turns out. The 100lbs or so, so far have become soups and sauces... the freezer is so packed! I cant wait to tally the final yield of everything for the year! My mom isn't interested in canning even though I tell her we have much more cabinet space than freezer space!

I'd have to say less than half a percent of the tomatoes are deformed in some way. There are just lots of tomatoes.... Wish the season here was a few weeks longer!!! They only started turning red when it started raining every day again.

 

[Chelly]

Can you start or grow tomato plants in the house over winter?
Reason I ask is, I planted a couple of seeds in a tiny little pot, to show my kids mostly - I normally KILL everything that starts growing - BUT apparently NOT this time, I have one tomato plant that is still small - but must have 6 leaves by now - I'm rather proud of the darn thing! If I can save it - I'd like to, very much!!!