If Your Tomatoes Aren't Turning Red, Here's What's Happening

It’s been a sweltering summer and if your tomato plants managed to make it through a heat wave, produce more fruits despite blossom drop, and ultimately survive blossom end rot, you’re probably expecting them to ripen pretty quickly with these long, warm days.

But instead, just the opposite is happening—and your green tomatoes are taking their sweet time turning red. What’s going on?

If ripening seems very slow, the most common reason is:

It’s too hot.

Surprisingly to many gardeners, the optimal temperature range for ripening tomatoes is cooler than you’d expect: 68°F to 77°F.

When daytime temps consistently exceed 85°F to 90°F, the ripening process slows down significantly or even stops. Lycopene, the plant pigment responsible for giving tomatoes their characteristic red color, cannot be produced in extreme heat.

Your plant has lots of new growth.

If plants are spending all of their energy forming new branches and leaves, their energy isn’t going to the fruits they already have. They want to keep growing!

So for faster ripening, you should remove any non-producing vines (the ones that have no flowers or fruits) and any discolored or damaged leaves (up to a third of the plant’s foliage). Leaves are critical for growth, of course—you just don’t need that many of them.

Too much nitrogen in the soil.

In fact, fertilizer can hinder ripening because it forces the plant to continue growing new leaves.

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