[mollyblob]

What's the best way to store green and nearly-ripe tomatoes?  All of my plants have suddenly died over the last few days, and all the tomatoes are starting to drop off and/or go rotten on the plants.  I want to salvage what I can before they all drop off and become easy slug food, but i'm not sure how to store them.  Google is very contradictory!

Can you pick semi-ripe tomatoes and they will ripen off the plant?

What's the best way to keep green tomatoes for a few days till I have chance to do something with them?

I'm already upset over the tomato plants, what a disaster if everything I salvaged went mouldy or rotten because I didn't store it correctly!

[JayG]

Semi-ripened tomatoes will ripen off the plant if they have reached a good size; the real problem is why your plants have suddenly died off; if it's due to blight then it might well have already infected the green tomatoes.
(I'm telling you this as someone who has just found some very suspicious-looking stems on my outdoor toms and has "been there before"). 

If you are sure the plants are dead rather than having just wilted you must take off the tomatoes and put them somewhere warm indoors, preferably not touching each other; if blight is the problem some will ripen and some will blacken and rot. Sorry.

[mollyblob]

I'm thinking perhaps it's blight- looking at some pictures online, my poor plants bear a striking resemblance 

The majority were completely dead (definitely dead- yellow and rotten)... I've taken off all the tomatoes which hadn't already fallen off, and thrown away all those which had developed funny looking patches on (looking as though they were rotting from the inside).  I now have two big bowlfuls of green and half-green tomatoes... not sure I'll find anywhere to put them all where none are touching each other!

Would blight affect the flavour?  I'd noticed in the last week or so my once delicious tomatoes were tasting more and more like watery supermarket tomatoes.

Half of one brave plant remaining standing, looking remarkably healthy.  Though I suspect it's only a matter of time....

[Carla]

My mother-in-law swears by ripening them in brown paper bags, says her mom did it too. Havent tried it myself, but mom-in-law always has an abundance of toms??

[JayG]

It's a great shame Molly and I really feel sorry for you (although I might be crying into your beer in a few days time!)

The toms which are already half-ripe probably have the best chance of survival; give them the best conditions indoors (banana skins underneath but preferably not touching the toms will help ripening)

You could do the same with the green-uns but keep an eye on any which show signs of going you-know-what-up!  

[viettaclark]

I think it was about this time last year that blight hit my tomatoes.
I quickly stripped the plants of all fruit, checked they were sound then piled them on three large sunny window sills and turned them regularly. There were about 20 kilos of fruit and eventually all, even the tiniest, ripened.
The flavour wasn't as good as straight from the vine but they were still better than any you could buy. We ate them as they ripened (a mix of green and red in a tomato sauce for pasta is delicious) and I froze, chutneyed and oven-dried to bottle in olive oil.
I'm just waiting for blight to hit here for the fourth year running but the south coast seems to be clear for the moment.........

[Pompey Spud]

SSShhhhh.

We might get away with it.