Our homestead garden blog

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.

I feel you are taking the right approach.

What are your daytime temperatures?

Anne Miller wrote:I feel you are taking the right approach.

What are your daytime temperatures?

It looks like for the next 2 weeks days in the 70's and nights in the upper 40"s to low 50's. Then as usual the temps will steadily drop. The tomatoes will need to be ripe by the end of the month.

Those temperatures sound warm enough to ripen them.  

I have had tomatoes in December when it is not warm enough to ripen them so I bring the tomatoes inside and then put the tomatoes in paper bags to ripen.  Maybe these are not as good as "sun ripen" though still more tasty than grocery store tomatoes.

Anne Miller wrote:Those temperatures sound warm enough to ripen them.  

I have had tomatoes in December when it is not warm enough to ripen them so I bring the tomatoes inside and then put the tomatoes in paper bags to ripen.  Maybe these are not as good as "sun ripen" though still more tasty than grocery store tomatoes.

They will ripen faster now. I need them to come ripe at the same time as the peppers, cilantro and onions because we make  a lot of fresh salsa that we freeze dry.

The lack of rain in this week's forecast means Its time to harvest the onions and cure them on these racks for 4 days. Those that look like they will store well will be hung, the others will be used in every day cooking and in our homemade salsa or freeze dried.

Using what we grew.

Its been crazy busy on the homestead. Cutting and splitting 117 full cords of firewood, Re-doing our driveway and preserving, canning, pickling, freeze drying what comes from our garden. So many quarts of dill pickle and gallons and gallons of salsa that we freeze dry.