When to Pick Your
Tomatoes

Whatever the variety, look for the color to shift from its unripe base tone toward its mature color, but don't rely on this alone. More reliably, look for the area around the stem (the "shoulders") to lose its green and match the rest of the fruit. A fully green shoulder almost always means not ready.

Gently squeeze the tomato. A ripe tomato gives slightly under pressure, like a stress ball that pushes back. Rock hard means unripe. Soft and yielding means overripe or starting to rot. You're looking for firm but with give.

Smell the stem end. A ripe tomato smells like a tomato, earthy, sweet, slightly acidic. No smell at all means it's not ready. This works especially well for heirlooms with complex flavor profiles.

Deep, even red color across the entire fruit with no green shoulders. The skin should have a slight sheen and the blossom end should be fully colored. Brandywine specifically tends to stay slightly pink-tinged even when fully ripe, don't wait for deep red or you'll wait too long.

Large red heirlooms are slow. Brandywine takes 80 days from transplant, but that 80 days is from transplant, not from when you see color. Once color break starts, most large reds are ready within 5 to 7 days. Check daily once you see the first blush.

For yellow and orange varieties, look for the color to deepen and saturate, a Lemon Boy goes from pale lime-yellow to a rich golden yellow. For Green Zebra, look for the stripes to shift from dark green on light green to yellow-green on green. The fruit softens before it changes color noticeably.

Green varieties are the trickiest. Aunt Ruby's German Green is ripe when it feels soft, smells sweet, and has a slight blush of yellow at the blossom end. Green Zebra is ready when the background color shifts from white-green to yellow-green. Use the squeeze and smell test more than your eyes here.

Dark varieties show ripeness through color deepening, a Cherokee Purple shifts from murky green-purple to a rich brownish-red with dark shoulders. The shoulders are key: they should be a deep, dusty brown-purple, not green. The blossom end should show red or pink.

Dark heirlooms develop their anthocyanin (purple pigment) from sun exposure. A tomato that's been shaded by leaves will be less purple but still ripe. Don't use color as your only signal, they can look underripe and be perfectly ready. Black Krim is typically ready 75 to 80 days from transplant.

Cherry tomatoes are ready when they release from the vine with almost no resistance, a light tug and they come free. Sun Gold (orange) is ripe when fully orange and slightly soft. Left too long, cherries split on the vine. Paste tomatoes like San Marzano are ready when they're deep red, firm, and the skin starts to pull away slightly from the stem.

Cherries move fast once they start. Check every day once color break begins. A whole truss can go from unripe to overripe in 3 days in hot weather. Paste tomatoes are more forgiving and can hang on the vine an extra week without quality loss, they're bred for it.