Im learning a lot about growing veggies at this latitude and short growing season (zone 3 a/b and north of Ottawa Canada). I wondered why Im not getting ant ripe tomatoes and the plants continued to grow taller and put on more flowers so I started to research.
Finding our earliest frost date possibility and then working back 5 weeks, I learned that that is the time to stress the plants to cause them to ripen whatever viable fruits they have on the vine. To do that I needed to
1. Trim them to allow sun and air to reach the hidden fruits.
2. cut the tops off and any new flowers so all the energy goes into the viable fruits.
3. trim off any smaller fruits that dont stand a chance of maturing.
4. with hold watering to further stress the plant.
5. (A step I didnt take) is to lift up on the plant where it meets the ground and wiggle and twist it to break some of the roots to stress it even more.
This stress tells the plant that if it wants to propogate its seed, it needs to start ripening its fruit.
If all works well, in the coming weeks I will have a lot of vine ripened tomatoes to preserve rather than green tomatoes dying in a frost.
I found tomatoes on the vines I didnt even know were there as they were so covered by leaves. And I got the beginnings of my compost pile with all the trimmings.
