Our extended dry summer here on the Eastside of Seattle was predicted to end Thursday night/Friday morning with the prediction of our day long gray skies and all day mist/rain returning. Yay! The air quality here from wildfires, and the fires themselves, have been awful. I have been taking advantage of the dry weather, and left my tomatoes on the vine, as they were planted late and most of them are still green and hard as rocks.
This novice gardener has heard I can still ripen my tomatoes 'on the vine' by clipping them, bundling them together, and hanging them upside down in a protected space. I spent Thursday afternoon doing so, and wound up with three hanging bundles, as well as a window ledge of tomatoes which fell off the vine wrapped in newspaper.
I'm glad I got this done, as yesterday morning we had a pretty intense hail storm for about 5 minutes. If it hailed as hard in the community garden where my box garden is located, I think I would have lost most, if not all, of the tomatoes. I need to drive by and see how my collard greens and chard weathered the hail storm. But, I've been told those vegetables are hardy and can go through the first frost, so I'm hoping if slightly damaged that they'll bounce back.
Has anyone else done this with tomatoes? Does it work?