To pick, or not to pick-when?
I generally pick my tomatoes once they start to show color and let them ripen on the dining room table. If I leave them on the plant, the birds get them! Is there any advantage, flavor-wise, to letting them come to full ripeness, before picking? What are good methods for keeping the birds away, or is that just a losing battle? I tried a fake owl and a fake snake, which worked for about 2 days.
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Allyn
- Green Thumb
- Posts: 480
- Joined: Tue Mar 03, 2009 5:38 pm
- Location: Mississippi Gulf Coast - zone 8b
I pick when I see the tomato has reached the "breaker stage." As I understand it, once the tomato reaches that stage the plant has sealed off the stem to the fruit and the tomato doesn't receive anything more from the vine. It is fine to pick them and let them ripen on the counter.
This is the advice I follow:
This is the advice I follow:
My main motivation are points 2 and 3. A sudden storm can dump a lot of rain here all of a sudden and I've lost too many tomatoes that were almost fully ripe that I was going to pick the next day.TZ -OH6 wrote:Picking at the breaker stage, which is just when the very end tip of the fruit starts to change from green to pink is generally considered the point when a tomato can be sold as "vine ripened" because it does not need to be gassed, and will ripen on its own off of the plant. Many of us pick fruits before they are fully ripe and then let them finish ripening indoors because...
1) It is easier to pick everything with color every three days and bring it in for final selection rather than trying to judge when a fruit is eating ripe on the vine.
2) It keeps the fruit from splitting if it rains.
3) It keeps bugs, birds and neighbors from getting ripe tomatoes.
4) As long as you wait long enough the flavor is just as good as when you leave it on the plant. I think some people jump the gun and eat early picked tomatoes when the color first looks right rather than waiting another day or two for the flesh to soften a bit. A day or two at that stage can mean alot where flavor is concerned.
There is alot of variability in flavor due to environmental conditions/weather so you will get different flavor quality among the fruits off the same plant, and also a fruit that sees 90F days and 60F nights in the garden may taste different than one kept at 75F on the counter top for those last 4-5 days of ripening, but that has nothing to do with being attached to the plant.
