I always put out additional tomato plants before the end of June so we have late tomatoes past August. Each year just before frost I pull all the green tomatoes. Most times I get a bushel of green tomatoes. I put them in cardboard box lids, and cover them with newspaper. I place them in an unheated space which is my garage. I check them once a week and pick out the ripe ones. By covering them with newspaper or something of this nature they will ripen more slowly so you will have a continuous supply until the end of the year.
I don’t do them all this way, I use a few for some fried green tomatoes. Of course any time during the process I can always go pull a couple of green ones if the urge for fried green tomatoes arises.
If you have a root cellar or basement that would work. My garage stays around 50 during winter, and I think a root cellar is 40 - 50. The temperature of a refrigerator stays right at 40.
There is a funny book called, “The $64 Dollar Tomato”. It’s a guy telling the story of growing tomatoes in a home garden. The title comes from the author saying it probably cost him $ 64 for his first tomato.
I use to start tomatoes from seeds. Grow the little plants, transplant them. The snails really liked them. A few would survive. Add really good soil amendments to my tomato bed. Finally get a few tomatoes.
Then one year I got lazy and just dug holes, added some plant food and planted 1 gallon tomato plants from the garden center. Those grew better than the ones raised from seed.
Now I just buy tomatoes from the supermarket. They don’t taste as good, but it’s easier.
Waaaayyyy back in the 1970’s, I had a garden with great homegrown tomatoes. But ya’ know what, so did many of my neighbors. I was out in the country, and tons of vegetable stands would open up every fall. Tomatoes, green peppers, pumpkins, squash, beans, etc., all at prices so great, it made my efforts to grow my own kinda senseless from a financial standpoint.
And now, where I’m limited to growing in pots on my balcony, its just too expensive to grow certain thing like tomatoes coz they price things like good potting soils & manure in bags, and organic fertilizesers, that a pound of tomatoes cost ya’ $6lb.
I have seen my grand mother growing tomatoes in my garden area and they look very beautiful I love those red colored tomatoes, though I am not a big fan of tomatoes.
