boy the gardening season is rapidly coming to a close so I'm out here today picking tomatoes about a week ago I turned off the water to this bed because I wanted to get these green tomatoes to ripen you can see in a week's time I've gotten a lot of red tomatoes so I'm very excited about that now chances are you probably have a lot of green tomatoes too and you're wondering what to do to get them to ripen well certainly cutting off water to your plants is a big thing because it stresses the plants and they focus on ripening those tomatoes another thing you can do is you can take a shovel and go around just half of the plant about ten inches away from the main stem and cut down into the soil and that will cut roots that affects their ability to take up water and one other thing you can do is if you have a strong back go to the bottom of the plant to the main stem and give a pull on it not to pull it out all the way but just to where you hear a few roots breaking and that will also do the same thing now if you are just plain done growing tomatoes or we have a big frost coming and you want to take care of these green tomatoes and not waste them what I would do is pick them put them in a dark area like a basement between layers of newspaper and you will be amazed at how well the tomatoes ripen you have to keep an eye on them though because sometimes they will rot and so that will spread very quickly you don't want that to happen so check them often I'm hoping that you're enjoying the end of the season with all of this fabulous produce that we're all picking and I hope you get to enjoy as much of it as possible happy gardening