but they may go on cracking with a continuing increase in water and eventually split themselves entirely open...I might pick them and leave them on the windowsill, with foil behind them, to ripen. Or just watch until you get a huge crack and then pick them....

(FFF=Famously Free and fair) press

One so-called CNN legal analyst has crossed the line. This morning, on the few minutes I overheard of Don Imus's show, Imus said Obama had called in and he could "read his voice" to tell he was a good person. Toobin said that he found that moving. They both seemed serious. Now it's possible I misunderstood or Toobin misunderstood to whom Imus was referring, but it all seemed straightforward. When I googled Toobin, the top story that came up was HuffPo's June 3, 2008 headline: "Jeffrey Toobin: Clinton's Refusal To Concede "Deranged Narcissism.""

Tomato!

A legal analyst shouldn't be out on a radio talk show having warm and mushy and leg tingling feelings about a Presidential candidate being called a good person, especially if he's recently been out over-the-top-name-calling another candidate.

Please delete this post if you don't wish to have any tomatoes thrown.

And don't forget to make some Fried Green Tomatoes.

Yum.

Tomatoes can continue to ripen on the vine even when cracked. I think the flavor is so much better than windowsill-ripened tomatoes that I'd take the chance on leaving them out. (You probably have already thought of this, but maybe rig a tarp over them to prevent them sucking up more rainwater?)

mine often crack (altho none are right now) and generally it's not a problem.

Me too!
I find once the tomatoes have been on the vine a long time in my own garden/locally--just not to total ripeness--they do have that vine-grown flavor. May vary with variety though.
The ones that are shipped and gassed for the store have generally been picked earlier.
You could put them in a paper bag with bananas and/or apples and they will ripen more quickly too. (It's the ethylene.)
But if it's ripeness on the vine you're shooting for, experiments show that putting red under tomatoes makes them ripen faster. (What's the tomato's theory here, keeping up with the Heinz's?)

If the weather really looks that bad, you could pick some now and ripen them indoors and leave some on the plants and see what happens. If they crack open but eventually ripen, you'll at least have part of a ripe tomato you can salvage. Tomatoes ripened indoors don't have anything close to the flavor of vine-ripened, they're more like mid-winter supermarket tomatoes, so I don't bother.

And btw, if you're going to ripen them indoors, *don't* put them on the windowsill. Tomatoes are like bananas, they need darkness to ripen properly, not sunlight. The plant's leaves need sun, but the fruit prefers shade, and that's why you usually find the tomatoes closest to the central stem ripening before the ones towards the outside.

Put your unripe tomatoes in a paper bag, not on the windowsill.

Condolences on the awful weather. Ours in Vermont has been similar, but not quite as bad. We are getting a half day or so of good sun every other day, so things are slowly ripening, if somewhat late.

i tried that 'ripen in the bag' thing last year with a bunch of green maters that didn't make it before first frost. i wrapped them in clean paper and set them in a dark, cool, dry place to ripen. results: squishy icky that i ended up throwing away into the compost pile (likely why i have so many coming up all over today).

but yes, i'm about to lay down some red foil underneath some of the plants to see if this theory works. all the books and catalogues are selling this and that, colored in red, "guaranteeing" better and quicker tomato harvests. we'll see.

I don't know if this will work for you (I never tried it, but heard about it often): Put an apple in a paper bag with a green tomato will speed ripening.

I googled it after I was swatted with this memory and it appears that the secret is the ethylene gas the apple gives off.

I just picked my first fully ripe tomato (a Celebrity, but twice the normal size).

First week of August is about right for here, especially since I put in a few plants early, as I do every year, in hopes the weather will cooperate, which it did. The first plants with ripening tomatoes are all the early planted ones.

w/ green toms on them--when killing frosts were likely and the old sheets didn't provide enough protection. Mostly cherry and the smaller rounds.
I'd hang them in the basement, leaving some lights on (fluorescent) and they would ripen.

I would go down and pick the ripest for use--while not perfect, they still tasted so much better than most grocery story toms.

I had my last cherry toms in January (I'd been gone over Christmas for a few weeks and took ripe and ripening little toms for use with my family's meals--they liked them).

Big toms a much more difficult to ripen in my experience.

Stop watering them; stress the plants. If it rains try to prevent the water from getting to the plants.

and put them in a paper bag with a ripe apple or banana as suggested; ethylene gas from the other fruit will ripen them in a few days. The result will be all the work of homegrown tomatoes with exactly the same flavor of store-bought.

Or, you can follow the recipe for Fried Green Tomatoes.

Or, you can just leave them on the vine. The cracks will seal, they'll do just fine, and once the sun comes out again in, say, September, you can have a day like mine today:

Beefsteak and Early Girl

as long as the cracks are clean. If you get picnic bugs in them, toss 'em as they'll just rot.

To ripen indoors they have to have started to turn - they don't need to be pink, just a hint of change will do. But solidly green tomatoes usually won't ripen at all. My end-of-the-season method is to put a layer of newspaper on the shelves of my seed starting rack. Put a single layer of tomatoes on the newspaper, arranging them so they do not touch. Put another layer of newspaper over the top of the tomatoes. Check them regularly and discard any that are starting to rot. I've had tomatoes until New Year's Day some years. They're not nearly as good as vine ripened, but far better than supermarket.