Best time to pick tomatoes and green+yellow peppers?
Posted on Sep 28, 2009 under Best Tomatoes |Does anyone know this question. I have a garden and want to know the best time to pick them.
When they are ripe. I especially like tomatoes in the afternoon when they are hot. I just pick and eat them right there. You can pick tomatoes early even when they are partially green, I do this when I get the report of the first freeze day. Then put them in a window to ripen. Different species signal their ripeness in different ways. If you are going to eat them that day, you can wait until they are soft. Otherwise I pick them when they are fully red and firm.
Peppers have a much wider range for when best to pick. Trial and error is the best teacher. The only thing to watch out is if you wait too long they will start getting spots of decay.
September 28th, 2009 at 1:06 pm
When they are ripe. I especially like tomatoes in the afternoon when they are hot. I just pick and eat them right there. You can pick tomatoes early even when they are partially green, I do this when I get the report of the first freeze day. Then put them in a window to ripen. Different species signal their ripeness in different ways. If you are going to eat them that day, you can wait until they are soft. Otherwise I pick them when they are fully red and firm.
Peppers have a much wider range for when best to pick. Trial and error is the best teacher. The only thing to watch out is if you wait too long they will start getting spots of decay.
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September 28th, 2009 at 1:34 pm
I like to pick my tomatoes dead red ripe and use it right then but some people say to pick them when they are pink and let them ripen inside. The peppers should be about 3 to 4 inches in diameter or so and nice and green, you can let them ripen to red if you want a different flavor.
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September 28th, 2009 at 2:09 pm
welll you should pick tomatoes when they turn bright red, and since peppers really have no time when they are really ripe, just pick them when they get big.
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September 28th, 2009 at 2:26 pm
I usually like to pick tomatoes after they have changed color but are still firm. Sometimes I will pick them a day or so early rather than risk losing them to bugs, birds, raccoons, etc. Then I set them on my kitchen counter where I have a whole selection of tomatoes in various stages of ripeness.
As far as peppers go, the plants will begin producing at a young age but at that size they are not able to produce as well as a bigger plant so it is a good idea to begin picking most of the peppers from the small plants so that the plants have a chance to get bigger (without expending all their energy on pepper production) If you let the peppers mature to full color (in the case of red or other peppers that turn color as they mature) the plants will not produce as many peppers. What I do is begin harvesting early (even if the peppers are small) and then keep harvesting all summer. Later in the season I will begin letting some of the peppers fully mature to the point of changing color. The rest I will use green. They do freeze well. I cut them up, put them on a cookie sheet and stir them a few times while they are freezing so that they can be packed in Ziploc bags as individually frozen pieces so you can just take what you need out of the bag (instead of ending up frozen in one big block)
Hope this helps.
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September 28th, 2009 at 2:45 pm
When they are ripe. If you keep them on the vine or on the plant too long..they will just rot.
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