Did the vines get frosted? If not, you can still use them for canning. If they were frosted, you can make stuff to freeze. I ended up making a big batch of meatless spaghetti sauce to freeze with the last of mine. They were from vines that were "lightly frosted". I had them covered, but anywhere the vine touched the tarp, they were damaged. I chose to proceed as if they were from damaged vines. Picked ones that had even a hint of light green, pink blush and allowed them to ripen indoors. Deanna

Something that probably works, Karen! Let me tell what doesn't work for me: A lot of people wrap their tomatoes in newspaper. When I've tried that, I've ended up with lots of rotten tomatoes! I forget to unwrap and look. Instead, I do the very simple thing of putting them in a basket and "sorting thru" them every few days. Moving from 1 container to another gives me a chance to separate out the ripe ones. This year's tomatoes lingered on the vines longer than most years. Many, many green cherries went down before the onslaught of Jack Frost but few of the larger varieties. Got lucky with warm weather up here near the border. I know that we all like to test the climate envelop with late-developing varieties but there's some real value in the early-ripening indeterminates. Bloody Butchers came back later and so did Early Girls. I almost hate to admit but will do so here: I still grow Early Girl and have for over 20 years . . . Just a timid tomato grower, I guess. Luckily, there are those who encourage me with appropriate choices for my garden that would otherwise go unimagined. Steve

My garden usually includes somewhere around 300 tomato plants every year. If ripening was a problem, I'd never have ripe tomatoes, the first part of the year, I pick all my tomatoes green. In the middle of the growing season it becomes a tremendous effort to store at least a ton of tomatoes most of the times, so I get behind. Why do I pick tomatoes green. Mostly it is to keep them from becoming too big, customers talk big and buy smaller. There are always plenty of pound and larger tomatoes to be found. Finally the primary reason is, I only plant indeterminate tomatoes, which want to keep going forever, except if you allow the tomotoes to vine ripen, it sends a signal to the plant, "Job Done", my plants will grow to 8 and 9 feet tall, then fall over my cages(from the weight of the fruit in the upper branches) and finally trail the ground. What do I store them in when ripening, since I raise my tomatoes from cradle to grave, the seed flats doubled up become the ripening containers, and the stacked shelves, I use for germination and growing become the ripening shelves(I sell plants too.) Would guess the biggest question would be "Isn't the taste affected?), no not in my opinion, the variety has everything to do with taste. Welcome anyone that will try both in an unbiased taste test as I have or just a differing opinion. I've tried very hard to get anyone to say they can tell. I use a mixture of dishsoap, vegetable oil, baking soda, and skim milk as my only source of spray. The plants get a heaping shovel full of composted material in every hole before planting as their only source of food for the year. I welcome any critique of my tomato enterprise, or ideas.

No help for these, but maybe for next year, if your fall weather is like ours. We'll have occasional frosts, with days or even weeks of good weather in between. I just cover my tomato cages overnight with bedsheets or rowcover fabric, and they seem to make it through just fine. It's pretty important to remove the bedsheets the next day to keep the plants from cooking. The rowcover might be OK to leave on, I don't know.