Southwest Yard & Garden; Pain in the grass: Green with tomato envy

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  • Marisa Thompson Courtesy photo More than 200 pounds of red tomatoes are harvested at the NMSU Los Lunas Agricultural Science Center.
    Marisa Thompson Courtesy photo More than 200 pounds of red tomatoes are harvested at the NMSU Los Lunas Agricultural Science Center.
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Question: What should I do with all these green tomatoes? Yours Truly, Los Lunas, NM

Answer: I first answered this question way back in 2018. And here we are again, with first frosts snapping across the state and gardeners sharing photos of final harvests, many with green tomatoes piled high. The same questions keep coming up: What is the best way to ripen them, and then what can be done with them?

If you are a seed saver, you may want the fruits to ripen to maturity. The difference between a fruit being mature and one that is ripe is that “maturity” refers to seed viability and “ripeness” is the most favorable state for consumption or use. Ripeness, then, is partly dependent on personal taste and the intended market. Many fruits, like grapes, pomegranates, and citrus, get more flavorful and achieve higher quality if allowed to ripen before being picked. Others, like bananas, pears, and avocados, are often picked when they are technically mature but not completely ripe so that fewer rot during transport.

The difference has a lot to do with how much ethylene each fruit produces. Ethylene is a natural plant hormone (aka phytohormone or growth regulator) that is largely responsible for fruit ripening. The group of fruits that can ripen off the vine, so to speak, tend to be higher ethylene producers. Lucky for us, tomatoes are in this group. If you want to speed up the process of turning your tomatoes from green to red, store them with other red tomatoes (or another fruit that produces ethylene). If you want to slow the ripening process so that, for example, you still have red tomatoes to make salsa, go through the green pile occasionally and separate the red ones.

In this column a few years ago, we discussed the phytochemicals that give chiles their beautiful colors. In case you missed it: The color change in a chile fruit from green to red as it matures is indicative of the changing ratio of green chlorophyll to red carotenoid pigments. Lo and behold, the same is true in ripening tomatoes. Lycopene, famous for its health benefits as a powerful antioxidant, is in this red pigment group.

Here at the NMSU Agricultural Science Center at Los Lunas in 2018, we harvested almost 5,000 pounds of tomatoes between August and the first frost; almost half of them were picked in October and were very green. Most of them turned red rapidly, but the green ones that were not mature (seeds not developed enough) never ripened.

I also remember the delicious loaves of green tomato bread that Valencia County Extension Master Gardener Lin Yeskie kindly baked (using a recipe from Dina Ortega’s sister) and delivered to our office that year. I have included the recipe below—feel free to quadruple it.