The Easiest Hack To Help Garden Tomatoes That Are Struggling To Ripen On The Vine

There are plenty of garden myths about ripening tomatoes, and frankly, many of them work. You may have heard, like we have, that putting tomatoes in a paper bag or setting them on a sunny windowsill will help them ripen, and in many cases, that's true. But sometimes, it seems that no matter how well your tomatoes are doing on the vine, you have a few stubborn holdouts that just refuse to ripen. Luckily, there's a hack to help you speed up the ripening process; it just involves a little outside help. Put a piece of ripe fruit, such as an apple, into a cardboard box with your unripe tomatoes.

Did you know that many of the tomatoes you buy in the store are picked while they are still green? They use ethylene gas — the same gaseous hormone that's produced naturally by apples — to help them ripen on the way to the store. As Epic Gardening explains on YouTube, you can remove unripe tomatoes from the plant and place them in a cardboard box so the ethylene released from the apples enters the tissue of your tomatoes, stimulating them to ripen.

If you decide to try to accelerate the ripening process by adding a ripe apple to your box of tomatoes, you must keep an eye on what's happening in the box. Make sure your tomatoes are laid out in a single layer, with the blossom side up. Once they begin to ripen, it will happen quickly, starting from the blossom end of the tomato. Checking up on them at least daily will ensure you can remove them before they get overly ripe.

If you still have time in the growing season, there are ways to promote ripening while your tomatoes are still on the vine. Cutting the top off your tomato plants later in the season can signal to your plant that it should put its energy into maturing existing fruit rather than continuing to grow taller. Want to learn more? Here are some more ​​tips for growing the best tomatoes to improve your garden harvest.