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How to Harvest Tomatoes

(Browse our Tomato Collection Here)

Your hard work and patience are about to pay off and your tomato vines are loaded with big, plump tomatoes! Visions of BLTs, caprese salad (recipe here), and fresh salsa dance in your head and you just can’t wait to pick them. So how do you know when the right harvest time is?

Unlike other veggies (i.e. peppers or cukes), tomatoes do not improve when left on the vine too long. Even picking a day early is better than waiting for that perfect moment. After all this isn’t a grocery store . . . you have complete control over when you pick your precious tomatoes. Here’s a few tips to get it perfect.

  1. Tomatoes continue to ripen after picking (thank you Ethylene gas). Release of this gas is what turns the tomato from green to yellow, red, or orange. Store bought tomatoes are typically picked at the mature green stage and let to ripen in transit but this does result in some loss of flavor and texture.
  2. As your tomatoes ripen, watch the color. A pinkish blush will start on the bottom and work its way over the top of the fruit. Once fully red (or yellow, orange, or pink depending on variety) and very slightly soft to the touch, you can harvest. See below for a handy color chart from the USDA. Exception to this rule: Heirloom varieties should be picked before they reach the “full color” stage. Pick when the bottom of the fruit has fully changed but the stem end still has flecks of green and the fruit is slightly soft to the touch. Let ripen the rest of the way on your kitchen counter. A handy hint: fully ripe tomatoes will sink in water.
  3. If you have tomatoes on the vine at the end of the season when a freeze is imminent, pick them all and store in a brown paper bag with a banana peel or two. The released ethylene gas will continue the ripening process.
  4. To pick without damaging the rest of the vine, gently grab the tomato with one hand and twist until the stalk breaks away from the plant. Do not pull straight up or out as this could dislodge the whole plant. If you’re growing indeterminate varieties (those that produce all season long), be careful not to knock off baby tomatoes or new blossoms.
  5. Gently wash and dry the fruit and store indoors and out of direct sunlight. Do not store tomatoes in the refrigerator! 

Cooking hint: to easily remove the skin for making sauces or salsa, cut out the core and make a small X on the blossom end. Submerge in boiling water for about 30 seconds or until you see the skin start to split. Remove with a slotted spoon and submerge into ice water to stop the cooking. The skins will practically fall right off.

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Compost Troubleshooting: Why Does My Compost Pile Smell?

Let’s start with the basic ground rule of composting: your pile should not smell bad. It can occasionally smell “earthy” or even fruity if you’ve dumped in a lot of rinds but an unpleasant smell is a sign that something is out of balance.

Sour or Ammonia Smell

This one was learned from personal experience as we’ve gotten to know our enclosed composting bin. This small bin holds 65 gallons so it’s just slightly bigger than a large hard-sided garbage can. You’d think that’s too small but after two weeks of just dumping in our household food scraps and odds and ends from trimming and weeding in my gardens, we barely had a few inches of compost cooking. So, the husband decided to get things moving by adding lawn clippings. Like three mower bags full of lawn clippings.

And that’s how we learned: compost mixture should be two to three parts browns (leaves, sawdust, wood shavings, shredded newspaper) to one part greens (veggie scraps, trimmings, grass, etc.). It’s best to layer greens and browns and mix them thoroughly after each layer and always top off the pile with a layer of browns.

Luckily, we are currently “grandparents” to a dozen baby chickens so our son brought over a big bag of their bedding (wood shavings). This was the perfect browns mixture to fix our problem plus we got an extra dose of super starter, chicken manure. I know, the things you learn when composting! Within 24 hours, the smell was gone!

Sulphur or Rotten Egg Smell

This smell is caused by a lack of oxygen so it tells you the pile is not decomposing properly (or anaerobically). This can also be caused by a too large input of greens – especially grass – as it can become matted and compacted too thickly to allow oxygen to work through the layers. Again, adding browns in layers and mixing well will stop this smell.

Also, make sure your compost pile has sources of air inflow – either through slits in the side of the bin or an open top. You should also aerate your compost pile by stirring it every few days when you first start out and then every week or so after it ages for a while.