Green tomatoes

Ok so I have a TON of green tomatoes. I'd like a good way to ripen them in the house. I read an article and it sounded pretty work and space heavy for the amount of green tomatoes I have. If you're wondering why I picked my tomatoes green I assure you it wasn't by choice but I was forced to. Anyway, tips and tricks please.

Place your tomatoes in paper bags with a ripe apple in each. Keep them in a dry place eith temps above 60 degrees Fahrenheit. Check every few days for ripening.

Inside an unplugged fridge with other fruit that give off ethalene. Open the door for half an hour a day,  so that it doesn't get moldy.
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 A side note for anyone growing tomatoes.  It's important to stop watering them in the autumn so that the plant puts its energy into ripening. A tomato plant that is watered into the fall,  will often flower even coming up to frost.

Agree with Dale and JD that exposing them to apples or other fruits that give off greater amounts of ethylene.

Found this list on line:

Ethylene producing foods
apples, apricots, avocados, bananas (ripe), blueberries, cantaloupe, cherimoyas, cranberries, figs, green onions, guavas, grapes, honeydew, kiwifruit, mangoes, mangosteen, nectarines, papayas, passion fruit, peaches, pears, persimmons, plums, potatoes, prunes, quince, tomatoes

Ethylene sensitive foods
asparagus, bananas (unripe), blackberries, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, chard, cucumbers, eggplant, endive, garlic, green beans, kale, leafy greens, leeks, lettuce, okra, onions, parsley, peas, peppers, raspberries, spinach, squash, strawberries, sweet potatoes, watercress, watermelon

Tomatoes do produce ethylene, but apples and the like definitely produce more. A funny experience of mine was storing and orchards worth of apples with about 200 pounds of potatoes in the root cellar - they set each other off in a big way. Went down about a month later and half of the apples were gone over and the same for the potatoes. That was a mess to clean up.

I set mine on a tray, stem down, single layer, and leave them alone. (Usually in my kitchen, which is still in the 70's this time of year.)

Honor Marie wrote:I set mine on a tray, stem down, single layer, and leave them alone. (Usually in my kitchen, which is still in the 70's this time of year.)

I follow Honor Marie's technique... I usually put the tomatoes on tables or shelves in the garage, or barn, or wherever, and move them indoors to protect them from freezing as winter deepens. I am not interested in fruits ripening quickly, so I don't enclose them in paper sacks or store them with other fruits. With any luck I'll still have fruits ripening into February. Sometimes, about the time of the fall frost-emergency harvest I'll have a lot of green tomatoes in half bushel baskets, but the problem with that is that they need to be sorted fairly frequently to take out ripe or rotting fruits. If they are a single layer deep that's much easier to do.

The problem with spreading them out in a single layer is that I have a shocking number of them. lol But I went through my bags of them last night, took out all the ripe ones and then spread the remaining out. I still have a lot of tomatoes left to pick but hopefully I can leave those on the vine a bit longer. These were forced early harvests because of animal issues. So anyway, working on it. Now to can diced tomatoes.

Oh any opinions on the best tomato for sun dried tomatoes? I have these super tasty little tomatoes that seem like black Krim but don't really look like black krim and I thought about sun drying them since they are so good raw. Seems a shame to mix those up with the other tomatoes in a can.

i leave them connected to the stems and branches, and even ideally big huge multibranched pieces, and then store them like that hung upside down somewhere.
in this way they ripen much slower (i too would rather they ripen as slow as possible cause i got far too many at once) and also less rotting when still connected to the whole branch.
you can even uproot the whole plant, once the frost is coming for sure i do this to the remaining plants that still have a lot of unripened ones on them, uproot everything, hang upside down somewhere where its dry and cool, or at least dry.

Oh, I forgot one, egg batter, dip in flour and then fry in bacon grease.

Well I'm not big into eating fresh tomatoes. Occasionally I'll eat one chopped up on a taco but not the biggest fan. I want to can them into sauces and the like. I've gone ahead and simply picked all my tomatoes and now I'm doing the bag and apple trick so I can get them all canned all at once.

I heard that the solanin transformation into sugar (?) has to begin on the plant to be effective.
If you pick a green tomato without any red in it, it will become red and somehow ripe, but there still will be solanin in it (potentially harmful).
If you pick a tomato that has begun to turn red, it will eventually become fully red and ripe, but without solanin.
Solanin can stand high temperatures, being damaged at 469°F.

chutney - green tomato great keeps for years