Harvest time Harvest time is the fun part. If you did everything right, you now have tomatoes everywhere. Of course, it's easy to tell when a red tomato is ripe; but what about a yellow one? A pink one? How about a ripe green one? Tomatoes are ripe when you can easily make a depression into the tomato with your thumb. If you are growing one of these other colored ones for the first time, compare it's firmness to a red tomato. You quickly learn what's ripe. Carefully pick the tomatoes and gently put them in a pail or bucket. If you didn't use chemicals and fee safe doing so, you can eat them right in the garden. Delicious! You can do many things with tomatoes. You can can them whole. Make stewed tomatoes. Of course, the ever popular "Tomato Sandwich" ( I make mine tomato and cheese ). You may even try frying green tomatoes. Don't forget to save seeds if you planted heirlooms or OPs. You can't save seeds from hybrids. Tomato seeds are suspended in gel. You must remove this gel by fermenting it. This removes the gel, thus allowing the seeds to sprout properly when planting and also kills seed borne tomato disease. Scoop the seeds, including all the gel and pulp; from a fully ripe tomato, that is free from diseases such as alterneria (big black sullen splotches) into a small jar and add water. Place jar, lightly covered somewhere at room temperature for about 3-5 days. When fermented, mold will form on top of the water. Add more water, stir, then gently scrape mold and debris off the top. Repeat until only clean seed remains, strain, rinse, and leave the seeds at room temperature, on a paper towel until they are thoroughly dry ( 10-14 days). Now place the seeds into a paper envelope and store in cool temps until spring. I also put my envelopes into a medium jar with lid. I store at 40-50 degrees. A refrigerator will do. Be sure to have them in a jar, when using a frig. That's it. Hope that helps. Be sure to clean up that garden for next year! ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Check out the links below for some great tomato facts (Be sure to click your browser's back botton to return to this page) or CLICK HERE to continue with Tomato Tips and Planting Time!. o Click here to go to Fried Green Tomato Recipe o Click here to go to Green Tomato Pie Recipe o Click here to go to Preparing Garden for Next Season o Click here to go to Seed Saving Tips o Click here to go to Home Made Bug Sprays