With our first hard frost of fall come and gone, the growing season has come to an end. A couple days before the frost happened, we decided to go to the garden and pick all the ripe and decent sized unripe tomatoes. My mom and kids helped pick and we ended up with several baskets full of red and green tomatoes. I’ve never tried saving green tomatoes before, but my mom has, so she gave me some tips on how to do it. I also looked online and found a lot of different ways to do it, from wrapping each tomato in newspaper and storing in a cool room, to pulling the whole tomato plants and having them upside down in a cool cellar or basement.

Since my mom has had success, and her way is so quick and easy, I decided to try it that way. First, we sorted all the tomatoes from the greenest to the ripest and laid them all out on a large table…

Next, we covered the green ones with newspaper…

We have them stored in a spare room at Mom’s house that’s closed off from the heated area, so the room stays pretty cool. Mom told me when the tomatoes ripen, the quality isn’t quite as good as what it is when they are freshly picked, but they are a lot better than store bought ones.

Since we were out doing a lot of picking, we decided to pick a box full of apples and store them too …

While I’m looking forward to having a break from the garden, I always hate to see the growing season come to an end because I miss the fresh produce. By saving some, hopefully we’ll have some for a while longer. It will be interesting to see how long these tomatoes last.

Have you ever saved green tomatoes? How did it work out? Did they last for a while?