In much of the Northwest, this has been a tough year for tomatoes. If cold nights didn’t cause the blossoms to drop, the chill weakened stems so that unripe fruit dropped before its time. In many gardens, tomatoes formed but never turned red. Some folks brought container-grown tomatoes indoors, as I did, while others tore out their plants in disgust. The good news is that many tomatoes will ripen further indoors, including green ones. They won’t match garden-ripened tomatoes for flavor, but they’ll taste better than the supermarket’s well-traveled imports.
When you harvest your garden plants, only compost diseased foliage and fruit if you know your compost heap gets hot enough to kill off weed seeds. If so, the heat will also take care of the funky fruit and foliage, which may actually help inoculate future crops against disease. (Gardeners at Seattle’s East Bay P-Patch deliberately add diseased stuff to their composts, because in their experience, this helps plants resist disease, just as an inoculation helps us resist flu.) If you favor slow, passive compost systems, only add the wholesome stuff. If your community offers green waste collection, you can put funky bits in the collection bin.