When to Pick Medium Tomatoes and How to Ripen and Store Them

The two months of waiting, and what changes at the end

From open flower to full color a medium tomato takes 55 to 65 days, shortening to about 50 in a consistently hot summer. That is half again as long as a cherry, and it means a truss that flowers in early summer is not on your table until late summer. Note the date each truss opens its flowers and you will know within a few days when to start watching it, which saves a great deal of squeezing fruit that is still three weeks away.

The useful thing about this size of fruit is that the last stage happens fast. A fruit sits green and full-sized for weeks, then passes through the breaker stage, when the blossom end first shows a blush of color, and colors completely in five to eight days from there. Everything that determines flavor is finished at the breaker stage: from that moment on the fruit is running on its own sugars and the plant is no longer contributing.

Pick at breaker or pick ripe: both are right

A tomato picked at the breaker stage and finished on the counter is essentially identical in flavor to one left on the plant, because all the sugar has already arrived. What you gain by picking early is control: the fruit is not on the plant when the storm comes, not splitting, not being found by birds or slugs, and not sitting in the sun going soft-shouldered. On a medium tomato, which represents two months of investment per fruit, that insurance is worth a great deal.

What you gain by leaving it on the plant is a slightly better texture and the pleasure of picking it warm. In practice, pick fully ripe through settled weather, and pick everything at breaker or beyond whenever heavy rain is forecast or you are going to be away for a few days. Both approaches are correct; the mistake is leaving fully colored fruit hanging while the weather turns.

1. Check the ring around the calyx Color must reach right up to the green calyx. A yellow-green ring at the shoulders means either two more days, or a heat or potassium problem worth investigating.
2. Test with the flat of your fingers Cup the fruit and press gently with the whole hand. It should give slightly and evenly. Pressing with a fingertip bruises the flesh under the skin and that spot rots first.
3. Snap at the knuckle above the calyx Bend the fruit upwards against the small swollen joint on its stalk and it releases cleanly with the calyx attached, which keeps it sound days longer.
4. Pick every two or three days in the cool of the morning Fruit picked warm in the afternoon sweats and keeps badly. Get it straight into shade after picking.

Write down the day each truss opened its flowers and the day you took its first ripe fruit. After one season you will know your own number for your own garden, which beats any general figure by a wide margin.

Storage: on the counter, never in the fridge

Below about 54F (12C) the compounds that give a tomato its smell break down and do not come back. Chilled fruit brought up to room temperature is permanently duller than it was. Keep medium tomatoes stem side down in a single layer on the counter, out of direct sun, and they hold their best flavor for four to six days, a little longer than a cherry because the flesh is denser.

Stem side down matters more at this size. The scar left where the calyx was is the softest point on the fruit and the place where moisture escapes and mold enters; resting the fruit on it seals it against the surface. Do not stack them, because a medium tomato has enough weight to bruise the one beneath it, and do not wash them until you are about to eat them, since a wet skin splits and molds in the bowl.

Ripening indoors when the season ends

Any medium tomato that has reached full size with a glossy skin and jelly around the seeds will ripen off the plant. Spread the fruit in a single layer somewhere warm, dark and dry, not touching each other, and check every few days. A ripe apple among them releases ethylene and speeds the whole batch up noticeably; so does wrapping a few in newspaper together.

Sort them by stage first and you will not lose any. Fruit already at breaker goes in one tray for immediate use, mature green in another for the long wait. Anything still small and matt-skinned will never ripen properly and is best used green. Check the trays every few days without fail, because a single fruit going soft in a closed box will take the rest of the tray down with it.

1. Sort by stage before you store Breaker in one tray, mature green in another. Mixing them means the green fruit is still sitting there long after you have forgotten which is which.
2. Warm and dark, never a sunny windowsill Direct sun heats the skin above the point where red pigment forms and gives you soft fruit with hard yellow shoulders.
3. Add a ripe apple to speed a tray One apple per tray raises the ethylene concentration and pulls the whole batch forward by several days.
4. Inspect every three days Remove anything soft or marked immediately. One rotting fruit in a closed tray spoils everything around it within a week.

Using a glut of medium tomatoes

This is the size of tomato that preserves best, which is a real advantage over cherries. The flesh-to-skin ratio is high enough to make a decent sauce and the fruit is big enough to peel without losing your afternoon. Score a cross in the base, drop them in boiling water for thirty seconds, then into cold, and the skins slip off in one piece.

For freezing, you do not have to peel at all. Freeze them whole on a tray, then bag them; the skins split and slide off under warm water as they thaw and they go straight into a pan. Slow roasting halved fruit at a low heat for a couple of hours concentrates them into something that keeps under oil in the fridge for a fortnight. Split and bruised fruit is perfectly good for any of these, provided you use it the day you pick it.

1. Freeze whole on a tray, then bag Spread them out and freeze solid before bagging. Bagged wet they set into one lump you cannot separate later.
2. Peel with boiling water, not a knife A scored cross in the base and thirty seconds in boiling water takes the skin off cleanly and wastes almost no flesh.
3. Keep split fruit separate as you pick It is good eating but it molds within a day and infects the sound fruit sitting next to it in the bowl.

The last pick, and what to write down

When frost is genuinely forecast, strip the plant of everything, green included. One frosty night turns a full-sized green tomato to mush and two months of the plant's work goes with it. Then pull the plants and take the old growth right off the plot rather than composting it in place, since tomato debris is how leaf spot and blight overwinter in a bed.

Before you clear up, write down four dates and two numbers: planted, first flower, first ripe fruit, last picking, plus how many stems you ran and roughly how many fruit you got per truss. On a crop where each fruit takes two months to make, those six lines are the only reliable way to tell next spring whether to plant a fortnight earlier, thin harder, or simply grow one plant fewer.

1. Strip everything on the frost forecast Take all fruit down to mature green. What is smaller than that goes on the compost, but nothing full-sized should be left out.
2. Clear the plants off the plot Pull them whole and remove them. Old tomato growth left on the bed carries disease straight into next season.
3. Log four dates, the stem count and the fruit per truss Planted, first flower, first ripe fruit, last picking. Those six lines are your baseline for next year's decisions.