Diane Palmer asked:


Any tomato grower, will recognize this scenario, and promptly tell you “been there done that” in regards to the tomato garden.

Picture this: You have slaved over your vegetable garden all season, and have paid special attention to those tomato plants. Everything is great, you are just a few weeks off of harvesting a bumper tomato crop. You have dodged bugs, rodents, and all those critters that thought of your garden as a midnight buffet..

But along comes mother nature with the perfect storm. You know the thunderstorms of summer, with the heavy rains, whipping winds, and sometimes the dreaded hailstones.

You can’t do much about mother nature, but wait it out inside, and watch your tomato garden suffer. You hope that your tomatoes weather the storm, and you head out only to find a bunch of green tomatoes on the ground.

Here is what you do:

Pick up all the loose green tomatoes, check your plants for any damaged ones, and discard them so as to allow the plant the energies it needs to recover and ripen the other ones still on the vine.

Take your green tomatoes, and dry them off, find yourself a cardboard box, line it with newspapers, and lay your tomatoes in this box (with a bit of space for air around each one) Next put in a couple of ripening bananas (yellow but with a tinge of green still on them). The bananas will give off a gas that will help ripen your tomatoes. Cover with loose sheets of newspaper.

In about two weeks, you will have ripened tomatoes to enjoy, as well as your tomatoes from your prized tomato garden. Enjoy!