I recommend against getting cats as working animals. They're not reliable, they're not all good mousers, and they usually get the bad end of the stick when they are disappointing to their owners. Cats should only be kept by people who actively like cats, want them as companion animals, and are willing to accept them on whatever terms the cats offer.

If I were you, I'd set some traps so that I could be sure that I'm actually dealing with mice. You could also have rats, voles, squirrels/ground squirrels, or any number of other pests. I would want to know who the culprits were, and if my own trapping didn't take care of them, I'd call a professional to deal with them.

I would also recommend you pick the fruits at first blush and let them ripen indoors in a protected location. I doubt that, this time of year in Calgary, leaving the tomatoes to ripen fully on the vine will do much for their flavor. Not to mention that ripening them on the vine will take forever, even in a heated tunnel.

You might also try putting the low-hanging tomatoes in organza bags. The weave on them is usually tight enough to deter small rodents like mice long enough to get the tomatoes to first blush, although you should keep in mind that you may not be dealing with small rodents, and you should also keep in mind that, once fruits start smelling really ripe, the rodents may become more determined and try to gnaw through the bags and succeed, so picking them right at first blush is key. For your amount of tomatoes, it's a lot of fuss, but I doubt you have many more weeks to harvest tomatoes unless you are planning to build a much more solid greenhouse around them in the immediate future, and the low-hanging ones are likely to the be only ones you manage to get to maturity before it's too cold.

hank you for your advise.

Yes I think they are ripening very slowly, even with the heater.

I will take your advise and pick them . Oh , to do a little bragging Alberta is rat free, our other provinces have rats but we have rat patrol, and they are doing a great job, we have no rats , " zero" .

My favorites are the dark ones . I canned several jars the other night and

just had to try a jar today. I love the taste.

No I'm not a cat person, although I like them.

I will just pick them and can them when they are ready.

I have a dehydrater also, so mat dehydrate some of the riper ones

Any tomato that gets to even the slightest blush of color is mature, which means it will ripen fully eventually as long as you keep them at a temperature conducive to ripening (anywhere in a normally heated home should be fine). You don't have to eat them underripe--as long as you don't refrigerate them, they will ripen completely with a little time. Many larger green ones that have not started turning will also eventually ripen indoors. At the height of summer, flavor is poorer with many varieties if you pick that early, but this time of year it should make little difference. If you want to slow down ripening, keep them in a cooler spot such as a cellar, but don't pile them on top of one another or rot is more likely.

Thank you for the advise, I was going to ask the question on here about my tomatoes having the full taste if I pick them before they are red.

I wont be worrying about mice now that I'm going to pick them.

There's a bit of controversy about that. A lot of people say that fully ripened tomatoes will taste every bit as good as long as they have started turning color--even if just barely--when you pick them. The science has something else to say.

However, it depends on a lot of things, including whether your palate is sensitive enough to notice under real-life eating conditions (i.e., not in a laboratory taste test setting, which is not how most of us eat), what variety we're talking about, time of year, etc. So, like many things when it comes to tomatoes, "it depends". For most people, the difference, if detectable, will most likely be slight and acceptable.

Personally, I've always had an oversensitive sense of taste/smell and can definitely taste the difference in most tomatoes during the summer when they're picked early. As a result, I try to keep tomatoes on the vine as long as possible during the height of the ripening season, but I'll pick a little early if heavy rains are forecast to avoid cracked fruit, and if I had bad problems with rodents, I would pick earlier as well. During fall, I pick them all early, as they're mostly going to be canned or made into sauce at that point anyway, they take forever to ripen on the vine in cooler temps, and their flavor is inferior compared to during the summer anyway.

Regardless of whether you pick them early or at peak ripeness, if you're growing good-tasting varieties, what you get will still be good and much better than anything you can buy at the supermarket. And if one has to pick earlier because of pests or weather, ending up with tomatoes that are 80% or 90% as good tasting as they would be if fully vine-ripened (if one can even taste the difference) is always better than losing those tomatoes entirely.

Also, when frost does come and you have to pull your plants, put the green tomatoes in a single layer on a table indoors. Many of them will ripen eventually, even if they are not showing any color change at all when you harvest them. Around here, we can get ripe fresh tomatoes until Thanksgiving this way if we have a warm, relatively dry fall. These won't taste terrific, but they're very good for cooking and for things like making tomato jam. Green tomatoes that look too small to ripen make good pickes, chutney, etc.

You've got a pretty big set up there Neal so controlling mice might be a bit of a challenge. I've developed a bit of the same problem with my garden here in California and have tried many methods. My growing season hasn't started yet...but I'm going to try something new this year. I've read that many people have had success using mint as a repellent. I've read that mice and rats can't stand the smell of mint. I plan on placing a small potted mint plant next to every tomato plant. And I've also read that dousing a cotton ball with peppermint oil and placing them on or near your plants is very effective. As I have not tried it I can't attest to its effectiveness. But I'm going to give it a try. Anyone else tried mint as a rodent repellent?

I've had friends report success with peppermint essential oil on baseboards/corners or put on cloth or cotton and stuffed into cracks/holes and tucked into kitchen cabinets in NYC apartments. But EO is very strong-smelling, and the spaces involved were cramped and small.

I doubt that a small mint plant would really be a deterrent, especially in a pot. Maybe if you had a dense field of mint in which you planted your tomatoes that the mice would have to scurry through on their way to the tomatoes...

I suspect the mint would be better put to use in mojitos.

And EO evaporates very quickly, especially in an outdoor setting. I imagine it would fade to tolerable levels too soon to really be cost-effective. But if you try it, give us a report.