Imagine an ideal summer vacation in the country: a hot summer day, the height of the season, and the harvest is ripening in the garden. How nice it is to go into the greenhouse and pick a ripe, juicy tomato for dinner! Today, the average vegetable garden is simply impossible to imagine without your favorite tomatoes. However, this was not always the case.
Columbus brought tomato to Europe from America not so long ago, in 1493. Now many varieties and hybrids of this plant are bred — both red, and pink, and yellow, and white, of a wide variety of sizes from sweet “cherries” to kilogram fleshy giants. One thing is bad: this juicy vegetable in fresh form is not stored for a long time. However, the depth of imagination of breeders is far from exhausted, and there are already tomatoes that are stored for a long time.
However, before you start growing these hybrids and then remove the ripe fruit for storage, you need to master the technology of preparing tomatoes for such a test. We grow seedlings of these varieties in our farm in the same way as all other hybrids, observing agricultural techniques. But the care of the plants whose fruits you are going to put in storage is a little different.
Care features
After the formation of ovaries, try not to feed the plants with nitrogen-containing fertilizers, then the fruits will be stored better. Watch carefully for watering, give water in modest quantities, but do not let the plants suffer from thirst. Cracked fruits from humidity changes will not lie. For long-term storage, only fresh tomatoes collected at the stage of milk ripeness or after the appearance of a weak staining are suitable.
It is necessary to collect fruits for storage as soon as possible, but watch the weather carefully: night temperatures on the street should not fall below +8°C. in a greenhouse, tomatoes should not suffer from cold dew. Fruits that are “beaten” by low temperatures will not be stored. Select tomatoes very carefully, carefully inspect: all tomatoes should be smooth, without flaws and damage. Small-fruited tomatoes with dense skins are best stored. It is difficult to save large fruits.
Preparing for storage
So, the fruits were selected; now they need to be wiped with a napkin dipped in vodka (the most convenient and affordable disinfectant). This way we remove possible pathogens of bacterial and fungal diseases. Then put the fruit stalks up in 1 layer in flat boxes or boxes. It is better to lay paper between them so that the tomatoes do not touch each other. Make sure to make holes for ventilation in the container.
Ideal conditions for storing tomatoes: temperature +5…+7°C, humidity about 80% and darkness. The higher the temperature, the shorter the storage period. If you can create such conditions by regularly checking and removing the ripe fruit, the tomatoes will last until the New year, or even longer.