Time to harvest the tomatos! But there Green!

Well it is time to harvest my tomato's, But what do you do with green tomato's? We've have had at least 3 hard frosts and it end of October. I tried to cover the tomato's so the frost wouldn't get them. It worked OK, but I keep forgetting to put the cover on at night and take it off in the morning. So for this year I gave up because the plants were half dead and full of green tomato's. Plus a lot of them are splitting because there big. So what to do? Well I remembered mom putting tomato's in a paper bag to ripen but that was one at a time. I know if you put tomato's in the sun the outside will turn red and look ripe but the inside will still be green. So i did some research and found tomato's ripen from the inside out and from the bottom up and they don't need sun to do that. I Guess you can just put them in a warm dark place and the will ripen on there own. Well that took me to my next project a tomato ripening tray!

Basically the tray is an optional pot tray from my kitchen cabinets that i never installed. I used it so if any of the tomato's got rotten the mess would be contained, I also put some plastic in the bottom of the tray so if any did rot then the tray would be protected. Then I cut a paper grocery bag down one side and all way across the bottom and put it in the tray and cut another to go over the top this way it keeps it dark and holds some heat plus protects them from dust or any thing else. So far so good it works well! I did find out a few things a sense tomato's ripen from the bottom up turn them over that way the weight is on the part that ripens last and it won't get mushier. Also as they ripen i keep the green one on side and the more ripe one on the other side not sure why, but they seems to ripen then at the same pace. Ya I know it doesn't make sense but what can i say.