Lilacs, I'm sorry, I'm a little bit confused by your post.

Are you talking about the heirloom variety 'Evergreen' which is a true GREEN tomato which is green fleshed with a chartreuse skin even when fully ripe? If so, those will always be green in color, but they'll taste ripe when soft.

If you're talking about regular red varieties, yes, many of them, if they are physiologically mature enough when picked, will slowly ripen in a cool place. Those that are too immature (basically, severed from the plant before the seeds reach the stage they could be viable) will never ripen, but instead will shrivel and rot.

You can help these to ripen by doing the following -- 1) wash them in a weak bleach solution (1 part bleach to 10 parts water) or in half water, half hydrogen peroxide, then rinse and dry thoroughly. 2) Place them in a single layer in a newspaper lined cardboard box or plastic storage container, and cover them loosely with another layer of newspaper. 3) Place the container somewhere cool (50 to 60 degrees is best). 4) Check them every 3 or 4 days, and remove those that are turning red to a warmer place to ripen the rest of the way, and be sure to discard any that develop rotten spots before it can spread to others.

I've found that I generally can have home-grown tomatoes this way until Thanksgiving or later, and, although not nearly as tasty as vine-ripened, they are still better than the cardboard ones from the store.

And yes, if you put your plants somewhere sheltered and cover them, it will buy them some time. If you have a garage or someplace you can put them, pot and all, and basically stop watering them, this too can be used to hold them for a while. Finally, some people pull them up from the soil and hang the entire plant with the green fruits in a cool basement or garage, and many of the tomatos will slowly ripen on the vine.

You mean there really is a variety of tomato called "Evergreen"? I didn't know that. I made up the name as a joke!

Yes, I was talking about my multitude of tomatoes on my plants that don't seem to be ripening very readily. Many are obviously small, still developing toms, but some of them certainly look big enough to start ripening. If only half of them ripened, I'd still have plenty of tomatoes for my use. And I have one green tomato, bigger than some that have ripened, that was knocked off the plant. It's been sitting in my kitchen for a couple days, but shows no desire to turn red any time soon.

Thanks for the instructions. I have one question. You said to put the cardboard box with the tomatoes somewhere cool. Cool and dark? Or should they have light to ripen?

Frankly, they're not getting a lot of sunlight now. The garden area where they're at gets plenty of sunlight in spring and summer, but in fall, the sun gets lower in the sky and is blocked out by trees, the house, and the shed.

I'd heard about uprooting them and hanging them up in the garage. I may try that, too.