Green Tomoto Festival Planning

Title: Message

You are invited to a final planning meeting on Tuesday, October 19 from 6:30 until 8:00 pm. at the Green Institute conference room for Greenspace Partners Annual Green Tomato Festival.

 

You've received several emails over the past few weeks on this event and you're invited to the last planning meeting as well. If you can't make that, we hope you'll at least be able to make the festival itself, which will be held on Thursday, October 21st at 6:00 p.m. at St. Paul's Church at 2742  15th Avenue South in South Minneapolis.

 

If you haven't pulled in your green tomatoes, what follows is a reminder about how to do that. I found when checking my garden yesterday, that even after the first light frost, there were still more tomatoes growing after last weekend's warm weather and that not all the plant had wilted yet. I think fall is truly upon us now, so if you haven't already done so, you might want to bring in the tomatoes (and other cold sensitive plants tonight).

 
Here's the suggested guidelines from a few weeks back:

It seems that, for most of us, tomatoes ripened late this year. And so plenty of us find ourselves with boatloads of green tomatoes on the vine with decreasing hopes for ever seeing them ripen. But the crop need not go to waste. As long as you pick your tomatoes before they freeze, they will remain quite useable.

In our region, the average first frost occurs approximately October 15. When you hear talk of the first frost, be sure to get outside and pick your green tomatoes. Store the green tomatoes in bags or boxes, laying them in single layers separated by newspaper. Sort through your tomatoes about once a week to throw out what's rotten.

Another option is to pull the entire vine out of the ground and hang it upside-down in your garage or basement. Once Corrie actually decorated his dining room with upside-down tomato vines and picked ripe tomatoes to serve at Thanksgiving dinner. Covering your tomato vines will protect them from a light frost. Sheets, blankets, tarps, plastic, or anything else will do. Do not bother to pick your tomatoes after a hard frost that wilts the leaves. If you really want to pick them, then cook them immediately. They will rot quickly in storage.

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