Why aren't my tomatoes getting ripe?

[Chris_W]

Hi,

Any suggestions as to why I'm not getting any ripe tomatoes? I'm wondering if they are shading themselves too much, or is it just a matter of time. Have no idea what kind they are, so I guess maybe they are a variety that are longer to mature. The bushes themselves are 5 foot tall and almost the same wide - they are monsters

[govgirl75]

Same here, Chris. The plants are green and robust and still growing, setting blossoms and developing fruit. They have a fair amount of green tomatoes on them but nothing is ripening. I have 3 varieties and none of them show any sign of ripening up. I don't have a lot of use for green tomatoes, either. You can only eat so much relish or fried green tomatoes.
Glo

[audre]

I've been doing the 'upsidown pot' experiments with my tomatoes this year and I've found that even though I had two of the 'same' tomato plants hanging right next to each other, getting the same amount of sun, nutrients and water etc, their progress has been totally different. One plant I've been harvesting ripe tomatoes off of for over a month (nice and sweet, too), the other, maybe one semi ripe tomato I pulled just because I have gotten curious about it.

Both are still blooming, too.

[kHT]

How wet is the ground that these are in? We allow our to totally dry out and they seem to start turn color. I have
also been told that the red plastic also helps them turn out here where we are really wet all the time. Full sun is
best for them but way from other members of the same family. We did 9 varieties and some varieties are way slower than
others. I'll also tell you we cut ours back so that the plants stays small and gives back to the fruit, missues the runners and leaves, too. We have some that are
big enough that it covers the whole slice of bread!

[govgirl75]

Thanks for the advice, KHT.
I haven't grown tomatoes in some years, except for the occasional one or two plants in a container. Just got back to vege gardening this year and forgot the difference between determinate and indeterminate varieties. Next year, will grow only determinate. I may go out and hack back some of the branches to see if that won't force the plants to concentrate on the tomatoes. We have been pretty wet here this year. Very unusual in that I have hardly had to water at all due to intermittent rain. Maybe that has something to do with it. Will let you know what happened.
Glo

[shadylanejewel]

Remove all flowers and very young fruit and definitely prune out some leaves (not too many though or you'll risk sunscald). This forces the plant to start ripening what is already there. Also as suggested, quit watering - although if mother nature's providing it's a little difficult to stop that.

[Chris_W]

Thanks for the suggestions. We've had quite a few tomato hornworm caterpillars do some pruning of the outer branches for us, so I think more light is getting in there now and lots of the youngest flowers are taken off already. Hopefully it will help. While digging through there I noticed that one of the plants is a Roma - a bit of a surprise, since we didn't buy any Romas

Next year we will be started a lot sooner, now that we have a dedicated veggie patch, so that first month in pots for these tomato plants probably didn't help them mature much...

[kHT]

Chris, it might have helped make stronger plants if left in the pots to get root bound. We tend to leave them get really root bound then we taken the two foot plant and
lay it sideways to plant and all you will see is the top 4". We try to keep them no bigger than the normal tomatoe cage, so that means weekly pruning to keep them focused
on the fruit. One of my neighbors swears by the red plastic and it too keeps the plant on the drier side.

[Spider]

What is the "red plastic"? Is it a special tomato thing?

Of course I would say it's plastic that is red, but I'm a smart a** .

[kHT]

http://www.parkseed.com/gardening/PD/9262/

Here ya go spider, the place they got it. All I can tell you is it controlled the weeks and they had tomatoes sooner
than anyone did and it was a bad year last year for tomatoes.

[kHT]

I took these shot so that you can see just how far we cut ours back and the size of our romas.

[govgirl75]

Thanks kHT. I never pruned tomatoes before, only pulled the suckers off. I will be sure to prune them in the next day or so and we shall see what develops.
Glo

[John]

Chris, that is a frequent problem here in NJ. Has it been very hot there for you? If it is too hot, the tomatoes will not ripen. Have patience, they will as the weather cools.

[KiethGoettl]

Ok so I'm definitely going to prune my tomatoes now. Thanks.

[John]

Studies show that pruning your tomatoes will merely give you less fruit for more work.

[kHT]

Sorry John, but we prune and it seems to put back more to the fruit?