Tomatoes still green and unripe? Make sure you don’t make any of these mistakes. What to do to take care of the tomato crop
Full of summer, warmth, beautiful sun and cloudless sky. You go out into the garden, and there the bushes shine bright red. Nothing tastes like ripe tomatoes just picked a moment ago. The essence of summer. But wait a minute. There are tomatoes, but at the neighbor’s! And it looks poor and doesn’t look like it’s about to grow and change color from green? Something is wrong. We check for basic errors when growing tomatoes. What do you do to enjoy a delicious harvest in the summer?
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When the tomatoes They don’t matureIt’s not always our fault. Sometimes this happens beyond our control. On the one hand, this is good news, because it means we’ve done everything we can to get delicious, juicy, and ripe tomatoes. On the one hand, it may mean that the tomato problem will be a little more difficult to solve, because we need to find a specific cause.
We focus on red tomatoes, although there are many more varieties, including chocolate, yellow, and orange. Green tomatoes are edible, but be very careful with them because they contain tomato matter, a substance that is very harmful to our health.
tomatoes They are green at first because they contain chlorophyll. As they begin to ripen, they create a natural hormone called ethylene, which starts the ripening process. A chemical called lycopene develops naturally inside tomatoes, causing them to ripen and change color. Lycopene can be found in tomatoes, apricots, melons, and many other fruits and vegetables.
Sun and heat are ideal conditions for our tomatoes, but heat and drought do not affect tomatoes well. It’s hard to believe, since we associate this vegetable with the sun and the summer months, but tomatoes are also sensitive to temperature. The optimum temperature for tomato growth is between 18-27°C during the day and 17-21°C at night. Therefore, an increase in temperature can slow down ripening or stop it altogether. In this case, unfortunately, we can’t do anything about it, we just have to wait until it cools down enough, and then the tomatoes will start to ripen quickly.
The same applies to extremely low temperatures. This can extend the ripening process by up to 3 weeks. If the day and night temperatures fluctuate wildly and there is a large difference between them, the ripening process may come to a complete halt. Then the plant will not set new fruits and our crops will be very poor. If the temperature drops too much, it is worth considering covering our seedlings with an old sheet or tarpaulin, thanks to which we will retain as much heat as possible near the plant.
One of the problems with unripe tomatoes is the selection of a variety that does not feel well in our area. There are about 7,000 varieties of tomatoes in the world, but only 2 percent of them are actually cultivated. Moreover, tomatoes do not equal tomatoes. Therefore, not every variety will grow in the same place in the same way, and it can also be a problem if you grow your tomatoes in the exact same place every year. We should choose the same flower bed every few years, if possible.
Well, it’s not just people who get stressed. This may also apply to tomatoes, which have a certain amount of energy in them. This is why temperature and variety selection is so important, otherwise the plant will spend so much time developing leaves and flowers that it won’t have enough time to help the fruit turn from green to red. Therefore, it is necessary to prune the vines, thanks to which we will stop further flowering and improve air flow. It can also prevent the development of various diseases. We also do not give the tomatoes too much nitrogen fertilizer, because in this way the plant concentrates on the leaves, and not on the fruits.
How to prune tomatoes? When our plant is growing properly, you can remove some of the leaves under the lowest clump. When new fruits appear, we break off the leaves, gradually ascending. In the second half of August, cut off the top of the bush. Please note that we remove the leaves on a warm, sunny, clear day.
It may happen that the plant is affected by rotting at the ends of the flowers. This can slow or completely stop the ripening process. It’s easy to spot and determine if flower tip rot is the problem. You will find black lesions on the fruit, usually on the underside of the fruit. Such rot can be caused by an insufficient amount of calcium, so it makes sense to add it to the soil. The most common cause of calcium deficiency is irregular watering.
If your tomatoes don’t get enough sun, they may have ripening problems. It is likely that we have chosen the wrong place to grow tomatoes, which need at least 7 hours of sunlight per day. In addition to this, the problem can arise, despite sufficient sunlight, if we plant the plants too close to each other. In the case of taller plants, the distance between seedlings should be at least 50 cm, and in the case of dwarf plants – 40 cm.
Tomatoes like water, so don’t regret it, however We water Directly on the soil under the bush, not on the leaves. It’s best to do it early in the morning, but if we don’t have such an opportunity at this time of day, late afternoon and evening are also fine. If mold begins to appear on the soil, this is a clear sign that the tomatoes are over-watered.
If none of the options helped and we got beautiful, but still green tomatoes on the bushes, then it’s worth trying the last. Pick the fruit and place it in a bowl with a ripe banana, red apple, or tomato. The fruit can help the tomatoes ripen.
