No it won't have any effect except to cost you tomatoes. As explained in your other post on this question, ripening is genetically determined for the most part and by weather for the rest. Carolyn offered you a couple of tips on how to speed it up a bit in that other thread.

Otherwise you simply have to learn patience. The plants know what to do and the tomatoes aren't going to ripen until THEY are ready. And their size is pretty much already determined.

Meanwhile find something else to focus on for a couple of weeks and they will get ripe while you aren't looking. It is actually possible to nag your plants into stress and then you can end up with little to show.

Dave

Go buy some of those cardboard gassed things from the grocery store if you're looking for that forced ripe taste.

Here is a link to many previous discussions here on ripening tomatoes.

This time of year when more than 1/2 the country is still covered with snow and 90% of us don't even have plants yet much less tomatoes, it is difficult to get too worked about about this particular issue. So count your blessings and maybe all these discussions on the subject from last year might be of help to you.

Dave

Here is a link that might be useful: Lots of discussions on ripening tomatoes

Dave - when you spend a sweltering summer here with 100% humidy and mid-90 degree heat day after day after day through October (and last year into November) such that the minute you walk out of your air conditioned house you begin to sweat but the humidity is so high that the sweat doesn't evaporate and your clothes stick to you even in the short walk to your car as you are bitten by mosquitos, not to mention having a hurricane hit and being without power to run your A/C for days, then I will listen to you complain about snow. Having spent quite a few winters in Chicago and Cleveland, I know what you are talking about but spend July, August and September here and you will see what I am talking about.

Come summer when you are impatiently waiting for your fruit to ripen on your plants, I will only have grocery store tomatoes to eat.

Obviously you've never been to AR in August. We have the best of both worlds. Our growing season isn't really short but not that long either.
You should learn some patience though because fresh toms are well worth the wait and you can grow them from now until june and start another batch in august if done right.
I was able to grow a few sungold select inside over Nov. and Dec. I may do a couple plants next winter so I can have more fresh toms.

Since you didn't like the replies from two posts please try your method and post your results.You do not need permission from anyone to try it .

yumtomatoes - I understand what you are saying, I really do. It is a very frequent question (as the link I gave you shows)

But the point is that you can't force/rush/push/hurry ripening. That is what everyone is trying to tell you and all the other new growers that post this question over and over every year.

So experienced growers don't agonize over it, we don't "impatiently waiting for your fruit to ripen on your plants" because we learned long ago that it is a total waste of time. The fruit will ripen in approx. 6 weeks time give or take a few days one way or another when and if they are ready to do it.

Sure, there are all sorts of voo-doo fixes you can try if you wish. But experience also teaches most of us that they are a waste of time and worse, they can kill your plants.

So your choices are to either learn patience as everyone keeps saying or experiment as you wish and risk ruining your plants and tomatoes.

Dave

Dave - I hear you; I was just trying to find out if anything would work. If it won't, it won't.

The only thing I am not clear on is the fertilizer for container plants that have to be watered once a day, and as it gets warmer here, probably twice a day. That has got to flush the fertilizer out and probably the calcium, too. I don't want BER.

Supposedly I am growing 2 determinates - Marglobe and Rutgers. The Rutgers definitely looks determinate since it has stopped growing vertically and no new flowers. Adding fertilizer to it shouldn't promote any new flowers or new vertical growth if it is truly a determinate. Even if it did, I could just prune the new growth off.

The Marglobe is not behaving like a determinate, at least not yet, but I could still prune off any new blossoms/growth if I wanted the plant to focus on ripening the fruit that is already set.

The indeterminate I am growing - Moreton - I would think that plant would need fertilizer if I want it to keep producing fruit and I do. The earliest fruit to set on that plant is turning yellow (yea!!!) so I should get to taste my first tomato pretty soon unless a bird gets it first.

And while it was suggested to try your method, which is a good idea and fine, you can't make any conclusions unless you have at least two plants of the same variety and they have an equal number of fruits on each and you remove fruits from one and not the other one.

The one you don't remove fruits from is called the control and when doing anything new, or anything old as far as that goes, one must have a control in order to determine if what a person is doing is working.

Carolyn

Since your first fruit is blushing and you are worried about birds, pick it and bring it inside to ripen. It doesn't change the taste IMO.

Down here in Texas, it's not the birds we have to worry about, but the Chupacabra!!

Joking, but I did try to call a coyote to me the other day. He stopped and looked at me and a couple friends sitting around the fire in my backyard. Then trotted off. The next day, one of my neighbors' dogs was attacked by a coyote.

It's good the coyote delayed his aggressive way. Too bad, because the shovel was nearby ,and I was leaning on the garden hoe. And the dog would still be around.

Why would anyone leave a dog outside when you know there are coyotes around?!?!?!?!?!?!?

That was kinda my point! DOH!

taz - I think for these first tomatoes, I want to see how they taste when I let them ripen on the vine. Then after I see how they taste that way, I will try taking them off to ripen. I will probably invest in an owl statute or a pinwheel.

Your first tomatoes will not be the best tasting no matter what you do. I was thinking, since you're so impatient, your blood would boil or you might have a heart attack if birds got them!

We live in the country, and this was when we were forecasts to have 1-3" of snowfall. A very rare happening. Instead, we get ice. Not much, but the fire burned through all night.

It was very late at night, or morning depending on how you look at it. Out here, dogs patrol most of the land at night.

On a sidenote, I love weather. When I saw the forecast, I collected every stick of fallen wood on my 4-acre piece of land and set to watch a uncommom cold event with a fire, and a bit of company, and warm drink. Then, I get ice,a coyote,and a very thirsty next morning.

taz - why is that the case with the first tomatoes?

I think your frame of mind has quite a bit to do with taste. But that is just me. I am interested though.

The overall quality of first fruit set (which will be the first to ripen) is often found to be inferior to subsequent fruit. So much so that some will pick and discard the first fruit so the plant energy is not wasted on them. It's an option. It's no different with tomatoes than any other fruit.

At the time of first fruit set the plant is still immature, minimal leaves are available for photosynthesis, the internal circulatory system of the plant is not fully developed, the distribution of nutrients is usually inconsistent, flavor is often diluted, the effects of weather on first fruit set are greater +/- (depending on what it was), etc. etc. etc.

Picture the standard bell-shaped curve. That first ripe tomato is enjoyable because we have been waiting so long but barring unforeseen complications, the subsequent fruit will be higher up the quality/flavor scale.

Dave

I couldn't say it any better than Dave. He's on spot.

So do you remove the first fruits to set right after they appear? How many do you remove?

So do you remove the first fruits to set right after they appear? How many do you remove?

****

I can't speak for anyone else but heck no, I don't remove the first fruits to set. I've waited how many months of cold, snowy bitter weather to taste those first fruits so no way am I going to delete/discard/demolish or otherwise get rid of them.

And with few exceptions I gave up growing earlies many years ago. I'm not one to look for those first fruits at all, especially on earlies, I wait until some of my early mid-season ones start ripening fruits.

And unlike some above who find that first fruits don't always taste the best, that's not been my experience with most varieties and I really do think it might be related to where someone, in a geographic sense, is growing their tomatoes as well as weather conditions, and the way folks grow their tomatoes.

And no, lets not take this long thread into ways of growing tomatoes for there are at least 20 K threads here about that already. LOL

Carolyn

So do you remove the first fruits to set right after they appear? How many do you remove?

Do I? No. Waste of tomatoes as far as I am concerned.

What I said above is that "some will pick and discard the first fruit so the plant energy is not wasted on them. It is an option."

Operative words "SOME" and "OPTION". But they are your plants so the choice is yours.

But I do pick at blush stage to avoid pest and weather damage and that was the original point Taz made and you questioned. The tomato, whatever its quality or when it set fruit, isn't going to get any better if left on the vine after color break. But it could be lost to pests or weather.

As Carolyn said there are 20,000 ways to grow tomatoes and likely that many threads here about how to do it.

Dave

I am going to leave mine on the vine for now and see how it goes. I couldn't stop myself from fertilizing again with the Tomato Tone just in case the calcium is getting flushed out of the containers with all this watering I am doing. The plants are in 6 gallon black pots and they get hot and are probably too small for the plants to begin with so I have to water a lot since it is in the 80's right now.

Next year I will get bigger pots that are not black and put some of that lime in the soil to help with the calcium.

I always slap some white paint on black pots to help them reflect the heat: plants really hate their roots stewing away in a hot black pot.

Next year, I will make sure I use bigger pots that are lighter in color.

On a side note, the first tomato to ripen got knocked off the vine by me when I was moving my pots around the courtyard so that they would get enough sun. So I have it sitting on a desk that is not by a window to ripen.