Knowing Ripe Tomatoes

Knowing exactly when to harvest your tomatoes at their ripeness is pretty simple when it comes to the red variety, but what about when you've planted the green or even the yellow variety? Well this may not be as hard to determine as you think.

You see all tomatoes seeds are suspended in a gel. When you cut them open, if the seeds move away from the knife the tomato is ripe. It's the opposite, the tomato is not so close to ripeness. Many times the seeds themselves will be cut. With the exception of the red variety you can tell mostly by the color.

Another way to tell is by touch. If you place a tomato in your hands and give a little squeeze and the skin bounces back then you have yourself a ripe tomato. Squeeze and your fingers go through, then it's over ripened. If the skin doesn't bounce back at all then your tomato is not ripe yet.

Now as to the taste, a ripe to can be distinguished by its flavor. When you bite into a ripened tomato it will burst with sweetness. This is accounted for by the fact that a ripened tomato has been allowed to mature with all of its starches into natural sugars.

Picking a tomato at the right time for a beginner will come by trial and error, but as you continue to plant, harvesting will soon become second nature.