The Color of Impatience
Aug. 2nd, 2004 10:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ladyspriteI like the color green. It's pretty, it's bright, it's the color of life and growing things and warm weather and things-that-live-on-sunshine. It's the color of my cat's eyes, and my favorite skirt. Green is lily pads and the leaves of my geranium and the basil plant on my windowsill.
Unfortunately, green is also the color of the tomatoes in my garden. Eleven plants (and I still don't know why I planted that many, other than I had the space and the seedlings came in flats of twelve), all of them shoulder-high and laden down with nearly a dozen big, fat, happy, tauntingly green tomatoes that refuse to ripen under any circumstances. Every day I go out to the garden, and I pick the day's metric buttload of zucchini and green beans and cucumbers, and an eggplant or a bell pepper or two, and I stand and I stare at the tomato patch and I sigh.
I've tried coaxing. I've tried pep talks, and pleading, and I've even tried leaving them alone. I've put them in cages and tied their heaviest branches to supports so the poor little tomato-backsides aren't sitting in the dirt. I've tried feeding them, and not feeding them, and still they sit there and wallow in juvenility. I am the proud owner of nearly one hundred unripe tomatoes. And while I am more than happy with the rest of my produce, it galls me to no end to have to go to the market and buy pale, tasteless tomatoes to go in my salad while the plants in my yard sit there with smug looks where their faces would be if tomatoes had faces.
Sometime, most likely about a month from now, I will be desperately searching for ways to use up each day's bushel of the darn things. Right now, though, it's just not fair.
Unfortunately, green is also the color of the tomatoes in my garden. Eleven plants (and I still don't know why I planted that many, other than I had the space and the seedlings came in flats of twelve), all of them shoulder-high and laden down with nearly a dozen big, fat, happy, tauntingly green tomatoes that refuse to ripen under any circumstances. Every day I go out to the garden, and I pick the day's metric buttload of zucchini and green beans and cucumbers, and an eggplant or a bell pepper or two, and I stand and I stare at the tomato patch and I sigh.
I've tried coaxing. I've tried pep talks, and pleading, and I've even tried leaving them alone. I've put them in cages and tied their heaviest branches to supports so the poor little tomato-backsides aren't sitting in the dirt. I've tried feeding them, and not feeding them, and still they sit there and wallow in juvenility. I am the proud owner of nearly one hundred unripe tomatoes. And while I am more than happy with the rest of my produce, it galls me to no end to have to go to the market and buy pale, tasteless tomatoes to go in my salad while the plants in my yard sit there with smug looks where their faces would be if tomatoes had faces.
Sometime, most likely about a month from now, I will be desperately searching for ways to use up each day's bushel of the darn things. Right now, though, it's just not fair.
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no subject
Date: 2004-08-03 03:51 am (UTC)They might not be getting enough sun light.
They might be a slow ripening variety (did you check?)
They might of been planted to early (or late).
They might not be getting the right kind of plant food.
Mostly likely they'll start to turn before summer is over. However you can try and experiment with taking a few off the vine and either ripening them in a closed paper bag that has an apple in it, or in the window. They should turn red off the vine (I do the stick them in the window thing when I'm force ripening them, but I've heard others do fine with a paper bag trick).
BTW, as far as I know fried green tomatoes are made in the south with a type of tomatoe (much like the green zebra) that stays green. It's not the same thing as an unripe tomato, it's a ripe green tomato.
FWIW companion planting issues that planting garlic and basil around your tomatoes will excellerate ripening (obviously too late for that now, and my personal experience doesn't support that). However if you plant one variety that is a quick ripening variety (even if you're not so gung ho on that particular variety) it will push the others to ripen sooner.