How Long Does It Take a Tomato to Ripen on the Vine？)

How long does it take for tomatoes to ripen on the vine? That's the question we're going to cover in today's video. Welcome to Gardenery. Garden plus ordinary equals gardenery. So whether you're a beginner gardener or a garden pro ready to start your own garden coach business or somewhere in between, gardenery is the place for you and me to hang out in the garden. So subscribe to our channel, hit the bell so you know every time we drop a new video, and let's dig into today's lesson all about how in the world, how long are these tomatoes going to take to ripen on the vine? You'll find out in this video. Okay, the first thing to understand about your tomatoes is that they are what I like to call a long and lengthy kind of plant, which means they take a long time. For most vegetable plants in the garden, I call the long and lengthy plants those that take over say 65 to 90 days in the garden. And tomato plants are one of those, mostly because we're growing them for the fruit and fruit is one of the last steps in the plant's life cycle. So just so you know, when you put tomatoes in the ground, you've got at least two months ahead of you, period, whether you're waiting for them to ripen or just to have something to eat. Always remember, unlike things like sugar snap peas, you can't eat any other part of the tomato plant besides the fruit. So don't try that at home, okay guys? All right, so you know that the whole plant in terms of maturity is going to take at least 60 days. When you buy a tomato plant from the store or from a local nursery, which is where you should definitely buy it from, you'll check on the tag and generally it'll tell you how many days it's going to take for this plant to finish up fruiting. Now there are two different kinds of tomato plants. I'll cover it quickly. We cover it more in our video about creating a tomato arch. So there's determinate and indeterminate. Determinate is going to fruit and finish all at once and indeterminate, which is what I'm growing here, is going to fruit and finish a little bit at a time. So what that means is I'm going to start to get fruit really early on the plant and then maybe two months from now I'll get fruit up at the top of my arch. So I'll continue to get fruit ripening again and again when I'm growing a vining or indeterminate type. That's why I like it because I love a kitchen garden that always has something new and exciting and different going on. All right, so let's talk about how long is it actually going to take for these little girls to ripen now that they've formed. So the rule, the general rule, is that tomatoes take as long to ripen as they did to form in the first place. So if you want to get super scientific about it, just come out as soon as, say, a flower starts to form and start taking a photo. Take a photo every single day of these little flowers slowly forming into little fruit. However many days it takes for the flower to turn into a fruit, that is how many days it's going to take for this fruit to completely ripen. Kind of a long time, right? It's going to feel that way. So in general, what I found is a flower usually can turn into a full-sized fruit in, say, I don't know, 20 days, 15 to 20 days, which means that these little tomatoes are going to take another 15 to 20 days before they ripen. That's given the optimal conditions for ripening. So we can feel a little impatient when we're waiting on that to happen, right? But I like to say vine-ripened tomatoes are one of the best things in the garden. So it's definitely something worth waiting for. A couple things you can do to speed up the ripening. This is not scientifically proven, but just from my own experience. One is do the pruning. So if you haven't watched our video on pruning tomatoes, make sure you check that out. So prune your tomatoes regularly so that your plant is putting energy into ripening their tomatoes rather than in growing more leaves. Another thing you can do is add a little bit of phosphorus-rich fertilizer to your plants. Always use organic and always do it very sparingly, maybe once a week at the most. So the phosphorus adds to the fruiting, so it will speed that up a little bit. And then if you're near the end of the season and you just want your tomatoes to hurry up already, you can actually cap the vine at the very top. So I could come up to here, cut the top right here, and what will happen when I do that is that'll tell the plant to stop putting any more energy into growing bigger and to put all of its energy into finishing the fruiting process. So those are a few ways you can speed up the fruiting process. The last thing you can do to get the ripening to happen faster, if you feel they're just starting to turn. So you can see on this row here, this one is just starting to get a little bit yellow. So as soon as that starts to turn almost entirely yellow, which is going to be the first color, I could cut this and bring it indoors. Bringing it indoors is going to speed the ripening just a little bit. I can put it on my windowsill and I can even put it into maybe a little brown bag. I don't love doing this. I love the flavor more when I keep it on the vine. But if you're desperate or if you have something like, I don't know, squirrels stealing your tomatoes before they become completely ripe, this is something you can do is just cut them as they just start to blush a little bit. Bring them indoors to your windowsill and they'll ripen up pretty quick for you. So that is the answer to the burning question of how long it takes for tomatoes to ripen on the vine. So if you want to be like super cool, just take a little photo of every single day as these flowers turn into fruit and then test me and see if I'm right. If it doesn't take that exact number of days for these fruit to turn pink and red and ready to eat. I hope that you enjoy this video. If you do, please give it a thumbs up and ask any questions about growing tomatoes that you have in the comments below. If you are ready to take your garden game, including growing tomatoes to the next level, you got to take our green thumb quiz. You'll find the link to the quiz right below this video. After you take the quiz, we'll help you decide where you are in your garden journey and give you free resources to help you go to the next level. Thanks so much for watching and I'll see you next time.