Pull them off the vine before you store them. After a certain stage of maturity,they will go on to ripen. If you have enough to experiment with,you might educate me by leaving a few on the vine to see how they turn out. I honestly never tried leaving them on the vine but the reason I reccomened not to is they might do as they do when frost bite. After frost kills the vine the fruit can look fine but taste like the vine smells. You will be a hero if you serve maters at Thanksgiving.

I left mine on the vine and hung it upside down in the basement. The idea is to pull them before the first frost kills the plant.

miesenbacher wrote on
Tue, Oct 15, 13 at 14:25
I left mine on the vine and hung it upside down in the basement. The idea is to pull them before the first frost kills the plant.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Have you done that several seasons?

Did the fruit taste same as those hearvested earlier? I figured the dead plant would impart flavor regardless what killed it.

Did the fruit remain attached to the vine when ripe? I would be concurned the fruit would fall because when ripe many come loose at the slightest touch in my garden.

Well, I pulled them and put them in my root cellar type basement that doesn't get heat, but is attached to the laundry room that does, so it probably gets some residual. There wasn't actually room in there, but I squeezed them in. It's my husband's tool room, and he hasn't seen it yet, so wish me luck. Lol.

When I save green tomatoes, I pull the biggest ones off and put them in cardboard flats shallow boxes over newspaper. If you don't have room why keep the whole vine? Also I don't save the small ones or ones with cracks and bug holes. I don't think they taste as good but they do ripen. Some will rot so you have to keep checking and remove the bad ones.

We had a hard frost on October 5th. We collected a basket of green tomatoes and set it in a dark, unheated garage where temperatures get down in the 40s most nights. We still have tomatoes ripening in that basket.

Tomatoes should never be stored at temperatures below 50 F. If you refrigerate them, the volatile compounds that contribute to the taste breakdown and the texture becomes mealy. I even notice that the flavor of tomatoes left to ripen on the vine is not as good when we have nights in the 40s in the fall. Part of the reason store bought tomatoes taste so bad is that they have been transported in refrigerated trucks.

I am still eating green ones I picked and stored in my basement. They taste pretty good. I would not keep them in a basket or more then one layer deep in a box because I do have to check every couple days for rotten ones.