As the owner of an organic farm and supplier to a local greengrocer I
am going to answer this out of personal experience; I hope that is
satisfactory.
By dying vines I presume you mean due to drought or simply because
they have reached the end or their season, rather than any apparent
disease. If the tomatoes appear perfectly normal then there is no
reason I know of why you can't simply treat them like any ripe tomato
and eat or can them.
If there is any mold present or any reason you would not feel
perfectly comfortable simply cutting and serving the tomatoes fresh to
your family then by all means discard them, tomatoes are just too
cheap to take the risk. However if you merely have green or ripening
tomatoes on dying vines and the fruit itself isn't rotting then
simply cut out any bad spots and can away.
I will caution you that several years ago the instructions for canning
tomatoes were altered to reflect the fact that many new varieties are
much sweeter than previously and that the lack of acid means that you
should either process the tomatoes longer or add some citric acid,
vinegar, lemon juice or vitamin C (ascorbic acid) to the mix to ensure
the safe processing.
Add 1 tablespoon of the bottled or frozen lemon juice to each pint, or
1/4 teaspoon of citric acid to each quart if you are not pressure
canning. It won't make any difference if you also want to add some
sugar to the mix, the acidity will still be present and protect the
food.
Personally we have almost entirely stopped canning whole tomatoes and
now process nearly everything into sauce or paste and freeze the
results.
Following the advice given in Carla Emery's wonderful book, "The
Encyclopedia of Country Living," ninth edition. Sasquatch Books, (c)
1998, ISBM 0-912365-95-1, several years ago we began pulling dying
tomato plants and any left in the ground just before the first hard
frost and placing them in a cool basement or root cellar, complete
with roots and tomatoes in place on the vines. We have found that, as
she states, these tomatoes will continue to ripen normally out of the
sun and will produce fine ripe tomatoes.
We do this with hundreds of plants and even ship them to customers
this way with excellent results.
I don't know your precise situation but I hope this additional
information proves helpful. However, you can also can green tomatoes,
they just won't taste the same as ripe ones. Pickling green tomatoes
is usually the better option.
There is a forum on Yahoo where you can ask others about their
experiences with similar situations.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/highlandranch/
If you want a tip for next year, a hormone spray commonly sold as
Blossom Set, will get your tomatoes to ripen weeks earlier and with
very few seeds.
I hope this answer was useful, if it was, please take a moment to give
it whatever rating you believe is fair.
If not, please ask for a clarification. |
