Green tomato relish will only be good if you have ripe tomatoes as the ingredients. However, sometimes we cannot get ripe tomatoes. Maybe it is almost fall and those tomatoes still hanging on the vines are the raw ones. You can just leave them hanging to rot before them ripe or you can actually make something from them like the tomato relish. But if you choose the later, there would still be another problem, the problem of unripe tomatoes. Can we do something to make them ripe? Why do the tomatoes stop to ripen once they are not on their plant anymore?
Let us look at the fact that tomatoes are the summer fruits. Why are they summer fruits? They earn the label because the plant bears fruits during summer and those they also ripe during summer. What makes summer different from the other seasons? The temperature. The answer to why tomatoes do not ripe during other season is because they need the temperature of 60 degrees F to ripe. When we know about this, then there are things that we need to do as precautions before the day starts to be shorter and colder.
Here are the tips:
1. Get the crop off because they can be the cause of diseases.
2. When the temperature has started to fall below 70 degree Fahrenheit, then you may not going to have more fruits and it is time it start the process of speeding up the ripening process of the existing tomatoes. The first thing that you can do is to pinch off the new flowers. After all, they will not turn to tomatoes.
3. When you see the weather prediction that there will be light frost coming, then it is time for you to cover your plants with sheets or row covers. When you use the row covers, you need to leave them during the day, but as they can be too heavy, you need to remove them at the other times.
4. When you still have green tomatoes at the cool days of the fall season, then you need to lift all the plants and put them in a dry place that is sheltered. If you do not have greenhouses, then the garage would serve the purpose.
5. If you take it indoor, you can place them near the window sill, wrap the green tomatoes individually with newspapers with 2 layers, and place them in a paper bag until they ripe.
