Ripening unattended tomatoes?

[bazzaboy]

A friend phoned me with a tomato problem, I’m not sure of the best solution. She has a cold greenhouse containing a variety of tomato plants in pots (both red and yellow but primarily the “golden grape” variety Ildi). The tomatoes are all still green and her job is suddenly taking her abroad for 3 weeks from this Saturday. She doesn’t want to trouble neighbours with this particular problem and wonders if there’s any way of saving the crop. The options under consideration seem to be:
do nothing (i.e. no watering)
move or plant outside and leave to the whim of the weather
cut the vines and invert
cut the vines and rest in straw or material
pick green and place in drawers or rack.
Are there any other options? (Resigning the job is evidently not a consideration )
Which one do you think might just work?

bb

[Sebbster]

If they are cherry tomato's, cut the whole plant and hang it upside down, but make sure it's OUT of direct sunlight.. The tomato's will ripen themselves.

Maybe an automated watering product ?

[SueA]

I agree with Sebster & would either hang them up or install some kind of drip system, but 3 weeks is a long time to leave them alone, they could become 'over-ripe' & drop or dry out if left in the pots. She could try getting large plastic bottles, filling them with water & screwing the caps back on but not tightly, so that a slight trickle of water comes out & inverting one in each pot to slowly water the plants or standing the pots on material (old towels or strips of sheeting) with the end dipped in a large bucket of water, soaking everything just before she leaves & hoping that the material will act as a wick to take the water to the plants, but as I say 3 weeks is quite a long time to try this for. Picking some & putting them in a brown paper bag is also an option, maybe she should try a bit of each method so she stands a chance of getting something that works?

[momol]

Hi BB,

Why not investing an batery operated water system such as those of Hozelock or from the Gardena ( I used both sytem, and I must say they are very reliable and lasted for years ). Once she has that, she just has to buy some hose ( even normal garden hose can be use and several springkler / dripping head, set them all together and program it to water as she desire... off you go... relief with her work and the watering problem is solve. She can always pick them later when is return, by that time it will be fully ripe ( or perhaps a bit over ripe ).

Cheers,
Momol

[bazzaboy]

Many thanks for all your suggestions which I've passed on to friend Sue suggesting she treats it as a research project and tries a variety of approaches to see which work best - 3 weeks and the current warm spell makes this a bit of a tall order. Because rushed (sent to Hong Kong, I think she was also trying to learn Cantonese in 24 hours ) I doubt there was time to fix up elaborate auto-watering but hopefully the simpler version will feature as one of the experiments. She's back home around the 24th Sept and I'll let you know the results then!

bb

[bazzaboy]

Resussitating this thread just to note results as friend Sue is now back in the UK. She tried all the suggestions (with one variation) and they all worked and, perhaps mainly because her absence coincided with cooler temperatures, she didn’t lose any at all (including on some plants that she just abandoned and left to their own devices). The one variation was that not having time to fit up auto-watering she gave some to a neighbour who had lost his to blight so they received tlc and are still being cropped. The difference between those receiving water, the ones uprooted upside down out of the sun and the ones abandoned was, not surprisingly, that the watered ones achieved slightly more size/weight but all proved or are proving usable. The good luck element seems to be that the fruit had set and was well formed before she had to leave them plus the cooler temperatures. Sue asked me to thank everyone that had taken the time and trouble to offer suggestions and is now fully occupied making pasta sauces etc.

bb

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