When to Pick Cherry Tomatoes and How to Keep Them

Full color to the shoulders, and slightly soft

A cherry tomato colors from the blossom end towards the stem, and the ring of skin right around the calyx is the last part to change. When that ring has lost its green and the fruit gives very slightly under gentle pressure, it is at peak sugar. Picked a day earlier it is firm and sharp, picked two days later it is soft and prone to splitting on the plant.

From open flower to ripe fruit is about 40 days on a cherry tomato, faster than the 50 or so a slicing tomato needs, and it shortens to around 35 days in a hot spell. Note the date a truss flowers and you will know within a few days when to start looking at it. The whole truss will not ripen at once: expect to visit the same truss five or six times over a fortnight.

1. Check the ring around the calyx Tilt the fruit and look at the shoulders. Any green there means give it two more days. Uniform color to the calyx means pick it now.
2. Pick every two or three days Leave it a week and the earliest fruit on each truss has split or gone soft. Frequent light picking is the whole rhythm of a cherry tomato.
3. Snap at the knuckle above the calyx Bend the fruit upwards against the small swollen joint on its stalk and it comes away cleanly with the calyx attached, which keeps it fresh far longer.
4. Pick in the cool of the morning Fruit picked warm in the afternoon sweats in the bowl and keeps badly. Get it into the shade straight away.

Write down the day a truss opened its flowers and the day you took the first ripe fruit from it. After one season you will know your own number, which is more useful than any general figure.

Picking a whole truss versus picking fruit by fruit

You can cut an entire truss with pruners once about three quarters of its fruit has colored. It looks handsome, it keeps well on the stem, and it is far quicker than picking individually. The cost is the quarter of the truss that was not ready, which will finish indoors but never taste as good as fruit ripened on the plant.

Picking fruit by fruit gives you better flavor and a longer overall harvest from each truss, at the cost of more visits. In practice most people do both: individual picking through the main season when flavor matters, whole trusses at the end of the season when frost is coming and speed matters more.

Keeping them: not in the fridge

Cherry tomatoes lose their aroma below about 54F (12C), and the loss is permanent. Fruit that has been chilled and brought back to room temperature never gets its smell back. Keep them in a single layer in a bowl on the counter, out of direct sun, and eat them within four or five days. Do not pile them deep, because the ones at the bottom bruise under the weight and go over in a day.

If you have far more than you can eat, the fridge is a compromise rather than a mistake: a week at chill temperature is better than fruit rotting on the counter, and the flavor recovers partially if you take them out an hour before eating. Wash them only just before you use them, since wet skins split and mold in the bowl.

What to do with a glut

A well-grown pair of cherry tomato plants will produce more fruit at the peak of the season than any household eats fresh, and unlike large tomatoes they are awkward to skin and freeze whole. The two preserving methods that suit them are slow roasting and freezing whole and unpeeled, and both are far less work than they sound.

Halve them, toss with oil and salt, and roast at a low heat for two hours until they are collapsed and concentrated; they will keep under oil in the fridge for a fortnight. Or freeze them whole on a tray, then bag them: the skins slip off under warm water as they thaw and they go straight into sauces. Split fruit is fine for both, as long as you use it the day you pick it.

1. Use split fruit immediately A split cherry tomato is perfectly good eating but it goes over within a day and molds fast in a bowl with sound fruit. Separate it as you pick.
2. Freeze whole on a tray first Spread them out, freeze solid, then bag them. Bagged wet they freeze into one solid lump you cannot break up.
3. Slow roast the bruised ones Anything soft or misshapen roasts down beautifully. Sort as you pick and you never waste any.

The end of the season

In the last six weeks, take off any truss that is still only flowers. It cannot ripen and it is drawing on the plant. Keep picking every few days right up to the frost forecast, because late fruit ripening in cooler weather is often the sweetest of the season, the plant having slowed down and the sugars having had longer to accumulate.

When frost is genuinely coming, strip everything. Green cherry tomatoes will color indoors over a week or two spread out in a single layer somewhere warm and dark, and a ripe apple among them speeds it up noticeably. What stays green and hard after a fortnight can be pickled. Then pull the plants and take them right off the plot rather than composting them where disease can carry over.

1. Remove flower-only trusses six weeks out At 40 days from flower to fruit, anything opening inside the last six weeks will not make it. Pinch the whole truss off.
2. Strip the plant before the first frost Take everything, green included. One frosty night turns the whole crop to mush.
3. Ripen indoors in a single layer Warm, dark and dry, spread out so they are not touching. Check every couple of days and remove anything going soft.
4. Log your first and last picking dates The span between them is the number that tells you next spring whether to plant earlier, top later, or add a plant.