About three weeks ago we had our first night of temperatures below freezing, so I picked the remaining viable cherry tomatoes on my plant. The ones I picked were close to full-size but green. (I was told that the tiny ones wouldn't develop, so I skipped a few of those.)

This was my first time growing tomatoes. The wisdom of the Internet told me to put the green tomatoes in a brown paper bag along with a sacrificial apple to ripen the tomatoes. I left the bag on the kitchen counter, several feet away from heat sources. After a week, the tomatoes were still mostly green and the apple was drying up. I replaced the apple and, as an experiment, moved some of the tomatoes to the windowsill, where they started to ripen.

When the second sacrificial apple was spent and the tomatoes in the bag were still mostly green, I moved them to a transparent cup on the windowsill. They've been off the plant for three weeks now and I don't know how any of this will affect the taste, but they're starting to turn orange. The earlier ones (the ones I moved to the windowsill after that first week) turned red and tasted ok -- not as good as fresh-picked, but still edible. Assuming these ones progress, I'll try to eat them too, unless there's a food-safety reason not to.

All this has me wondering, though: did I do something wrong with the oft-recommended brown-paper-bag method? Is there some reason not to ripen them on the windowsill like this?

Photo taken next day, outside of cup:

posted almost 6 years ago

CC BY-SA 4.0

6y ago

Monica Cellio‭ staff

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