The answer is they take FOREVER! :-) I also planted beginning of May and am just getting ripe cherry tomatoes in the last week. I believe full size take something crazy like 70-90 days to fully ripen. There's a link often posted here that shows the (interminable) timeline. I'll go see if I can find it. Best way I've found to ripen tomatoes is to leave town.

Here is the link.

Here is a link that might be useful: Eternity

Stephanie,

The number of days will vary a great deal. Some early varieties can produce fruit in as little as 49 days. Some large beefsteaks take 90-100 days to produce fruit. These days-to-maturity are just estimates and you often will find that fruit sets and ripens more quickly than the estimated DTMs in our climate, but not always. Many variables are in play, including daytime and nighttime temperatures, the number of hours of sunlight the plants receive daily, rainfall and irrigation amounts, or lack or such, etc. Weather conditions, particularly high temperatures, play a huge role. In general, you will find tomatoes ripen faster when the weather is warm to very hot, but at times the fruit will stall and will not color up properly in very extreme heat.

So, how long does it take to go from green to red? It would vary so much with each variety and with the varying weather conditions that I'd hate to assign a number of days to it because invariably it wouldn't be right and would be only a guess. For most tomato varieties that grow well in our climate, I think you could expect a ripe fruit roughly 40 to 50 days from the time you first noticed a flower had set a fruit and that the tiny fruit was just beginning to grow an enlarge. In periods of extreme stress, it could take longer.

In general, the DTMs listed for a given plant give you the number of days it takes for a transplanted plant, assuming it is transplanted in warm-enough conditions, to produce a ripe fruit from a flower. So, if you start with a 5 to 8 week old plant and put it in the ground after soil temperatures and overnight lows are staying above 50 degrees, you can expect the fruit in approximately the number of days listed as that variety's DTM.. Most of us here plant varieties with DTMs that range from 49 to 85 or 90 days. I don't really know how to translate that into how long it takes a green fruit to ripen to its mature color, because it can vary a great deal depending on the variety and the weather.

Here's the estimated Days-To-Maturity for some commonly-available tomato varieties like you might purchase as transplants in spring: Fourth of July 49 days, SunGold 57, Early Girl 57 days,Champion 62 days, Fantastic 65 days, Celebrity 70 days, Amelia 75 days, Better Boy 75 days, Rutgers 75 days, Cherokee Purple 80 days, Homestead 80 days.

I'm going to link the Timeline of A Tomato Truss webpage. It shows a truss of tomatoes from bloom to ripening. Looking at it might help you estimate when you could expect a ripe fruit from your plants if you can remember when you first saw the tiny green fertilized fruits beginning to grow and enlarge.

Based on many years of gardening and answering questions from people who are relatively new to raising tomatoes, I can assure you that your tomatoes will ripen eventually, and in most cases they will ripen about 2 ro 4 weeks later than a brand new gardener expects them to.

Once you have raised tomatoes for a few years, you will know about when to expect a ripe fruit from each given variety, based on prior years and on the weather in prior years. I have found most varieties are remarkably consistent year in and year out as long as the weather is behaving in a fairly typical manner. If it gets very warm very early or stays cold very late, that can cause results different from what you normally see in an average year. Don't ask me what an average year's weather is like any more, because it is getting harder and harder to have an average weather year.

Hope this helps,

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Timeline of a Tomato Truss

Mia, lol lol lol

The first ones take forever.

After that they seem to roll in pretty regularly.

While I was writing a long explanation, you and I were linking the same thing. Heaven help us all if that link ever disappears again like it did a while back....but then someone found it on the Wayback website and brought it back.

I'm surprised how slow tomatoes have been in central OK this year. The May cold and persistent rainfall/cloudiness must have slowed them down.

Dawn

My first one took FOREVER, now im getting 2-3 a day.

Be patient and soon you will have more than you know what to do with.

Emma

Ps, as a side note, the plant i was having blossom drop so bad on, the one i said the heck with it, i found 9 baby tomatos this morning while looking for worms...... So apparently if you cuss one enough, it will make for you.

Emma

I wondered at the time, Emma, if the cool spell we had right before you posted the complaint about blossom drop would bring you fruit. So glad to know it did. And now another cool spell--though not quite as cool--is forecast, so perhaps you will get even more. As for me--I am getting ready to blanch tomatoes for the freezer. Both the Bush Goliath and the Fourth of July that overwintered in the greenhouse waited to put on til after we brought them outside and then they exploded, at the same time that the Bush Early Girl produced a second heavy crop after a brief rest. Also have several of the inground plants producing heavy, so off I go to put them up.

Dorothy, I also wondered if it was the cool spell that gave Emma fruit. I know that some of my plants have put out a new flush of flowers and fruit since then.

I put some tomatoes in the freezer this week and am getting ready to put in some more in a little while. The big freezer is almost full, so I'm going to have to stop cramming more stuff into it. I've already canned about as many as I intended to, and probably more than I should have. I'm going to yank out the paste tomato varieties tomorrow so I can stop feeling like I "must" harvest and use them. It is hard to admit I am tired of tomatoes, but I am. (Not the fresh-eating ones, only the paste ones.)

I'm looking forward to the forecasted cooler temperatures and rain. Having both together would be great, but I'd be happy to have either one alone. This week has been so hot and so miserable.

I just harvested a lot of fruit (you know how this variety produces) from Fourth of July the day before yesterday and sent Tim off to work with a big bag of tomatoes to give away that included not only Fourth of July and Early Girl, but Early Doll, Carmello and Momotaro as well. We love tomatoes, but we can only eat so many fresh ones at one time. I planted significantly fewer plants this year and we still are overrun with tomatoes, so I'll cut back even further next year.

My fall tomatoes have blooms on them which I wasn't really expecting this early since the plants are still pretty small, but I'll leave them alone and see what happens. I would imagine the blossoms will drop without setting fruit, considering that our high temperatures this week have been in the 104-107 degree range and our nights have mostly been in the upper 70s, although last night was cooler.

It is a really good tomato year again, and for that I'm grateful. We're starting to get lots of okra and watermelons now, and keeping up with the cucumbers is quite a chore, but it still is the tomatoes that I struggle to keep up with, especially on very hot days when the last thing I want to do is to stand out there in the sun picking tomatoes.

Dawn

Thanks everyone for all your help. We are having such a good time with all the gardening chores and the information.

I am willing to wait it out, just god to know that eventually my tomatoes will be ready to eat. I appreciate each of you that answered, and the laughs you gave me. I read your responses outloud to my group!

Stephanie