5 Reasons Your Tomatoes Are Not Ripening + How You Can Help
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Tomatoes not ripening? If your fruit is staying stubbornly green, pale, or only half colored, don’t panic just yet. In many cases, the tomatoes are still healthy – the ripening process is simply moving more slowly than you’d like.
Tomato plants need the right combination of time, temperature, and plant health to turn green fruit into flavorful ripe tomatoes. Sometimes the fix is simply waiting a little longer. Other times, it makes sense to pick mature fruit and let it ripen indoors.
Below are the most common reasons for tomatoes not turning red, plus what you can do to help them along.
Table of Contents
- Why do tomatoes turn red?
- Reason #1 Your Tomatoes Don’t Ripen = Time to Maturity
- Reason #2 Your Tomatoes Are Not Ripening = Temps are Too Hot
- Reason #3 Your Tomatoes Aren’t Turning Red = Temps are Too Cold
- #4 – The Plant is Overloaded or Stressed
- Reason #5 Your Tomatoes Aren’t Turning Red – They’re Not Red Tomatoes
- When Your Tomatoes Finally Do Get Ripe
- Other Reasons For Strange Colored Tomatoes
Why do tomatoes turn red?
A tomato doesn’t go from tiny green fruit to a perfect vine ripened tomato overnight. First comes fruit development – the tomato grows to its expected size and shape. After that, the fruit moves into the ripening process, where chlorophyll breaks down and color pigments develop.
As tomatoes ripen:
- green color fades
- the fruit softens slightly
- sugars and flavor compounds increase
- pigments such as lycopene and carotene create the final color
In red tomatoes, lycopene is the pigment most responsible for that familiar red color. So – no lycopene = no red tomatoes. Note that our bodies find it easier to use lycopene once it’s been heat processed.
Green Tomatoes are Safe to Eat
Also, if your tomatoes refuse to ripen, green fruits are safe to eat. Just process them in some way before eating, such as cooking or pickling. We turned the green tomatoes knocked off our plants during a hail storm into green tomato pickles. You can also make fried green tomatoes.
Reason #1 Your Tomatoes Don’t Ripen = Time to Maturity
Sometimes the simplest answer is the right one: the fruit isn’t ready yet.
Most tomato plants need time to move through both flowering and fruit ripening. After pollination, many tomatoes take six to eight weeks to go from small fruit to fully ripe tomatoes. Larger slicers or paste tomatoes often take longer than cherry types.
A few things affect how long this takes:
- the specific tomato varieties you planted
- whether the plant got off to a slow start in cool weather
- how much sun and warmth the plants received
- whether the plant is trying to ripen a heavy load of fruit at once
If your tomatoes are still small and hard, they’re probably still in the fruit development stage. If they’re full size but green, they may be mature green fruit that’s waiting for the right conditions to finish ripening.
What to do
- Check the seed packet or plant tag for “days to maturity.”
- Compare the fruit to the expected mature size for that variety.
- Give large-fruited tomatoes a little more patience than cherry tomatoes.
If you garden in a short-season climate, it helps to grow at least a few earlier varieties along with the long-season favorites.
Reason #2 Your Tomatoes Are Not Ripening = Temps are Too Hot
This is one of the biggest reasons for tomatoes not ripening in midsummer.
Tomatoes love warm growing weather, but extreme heat can stall fruit ripening. The sweet spot for ripening is around 75 degrees F. Once temperatures push past 85 degrees F – especially day after day – the plant may slow down or temporarily stop producing the pigments that give red tomatoes their color.
That means you can end up with beautiful, healthy, full size tomatoes that stay green, pale orange, or just barely blushed.
When daytime highs climb into the upper 80s and 90s, production of lycopene and carotene can slow down. Without those pigments, tomatoes may stop turning red even though the fruit is otherwise mature.
What to do
- Wait for a break in the weather if the fruit is already mature.
- Keep plants evenly watered so heat stress doesn’t make the problem worse.
- Avoid heavy pruning during heat waves, since fruit can sunscald.
- If the tomatoes are mature green and intense heat is dragging on, harvest and let them ripen indoors at room temperature.
See Dealing with High Temperatures in the Garden for more tips on coping with extreme heat.
Never put your tomatoes in the fridge! Keep them at room temperature. With apologies to my husband’s late great Uncle Bill, who worked on the railroad for many years and shipped tomatoes in refer cars – don’t store tomatoes in the refrigerator.
Cold temps turns the sugars in the tomatoes to starch, ruining the flavor and making them mealy and bland. This is part of the reason many store tomatoes taste so bland. They are shipped in refrigerated trucks. Tomatoes stop ripening and don’t rot, but the flavor is subpar.
Reason #3 Your Tomatoes Aren’t Turning Red = Temps are Too Cold
We ran into this problem in the summer of 2014. The spring was cold and wet, and the summer was cold and dry.
My friend, Tami, who busts her tail to start her seedlings early and get them out in the garden as soon as possible, saw something she never saw before. Instead of getting red, her tomatoes stayed pink – but they rotted as if overripe.
She harvested all the pink, soft tomatoes and made some very ugly tomato salsa, but the flavor just wasn’t very good.
As the season progressed, the tomatoes that did ripen were bland and flavorless. I took to picking them as soon as they started showing the first blush of color and bringing them inside to fully ripen, because the nights were so cool. The peppers were the same way. Full size, but they stayed stuck in the mature green stage until I brought them in to the counter, where they turned red in a couple of days.
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What to do
If the fruit is mature but the weather has turned cool:
- pick tomatoes before frost
- bring them inside to ripen indoors
- place them in a paper bag to speed ripening, if desired
- store them at normal room temperature, not in the refrigerator
If you want the easiest method, I have a separate post on how to ripen green tomatoes indoors that walks through the process step by step.
#4 – The Plant is Overloaded or Stressed
Sometimes the issue isn’t the fruit itself – it’s the condition of the plant.
A tomato plant that is carrying a very heavy crop, dealing with drought, or recovering from disease may slow down ripening while it tries to keep all that fruit alive. The tomatoes may still eventually ripen, but the process can drag out.
Stressors that may contribute to tomatoes not turning red include:
- uneven watering
- too much nitrogen fertilizer late in the season
- low sunlight from crowding or heavy shading
- disease-damaged foliage
- severe pest pressure
- root stress from soggy soil or drought
What to do
- Water deeply and consistently instead of alternating drought and flood.
- Avoid pushing leafy growth with high nitrogen once plants are fruiting.
- Keep plants mulched to reduce moisture swings.
- Remove badly diseased foliage so the plant can put more energy into ripening the remaining tomato fruit.
If the plant is loaded with fruit and frost is approaching, I’d rather harvest mature green tomatoes than lose them.
Reason #5 Your Tomatoes Aren’t Turning Red – They’re Not Red Tomatoes
There are many varieties now available that simply do not turn red, even when ripe. Tomatoes varieties may ripen to pink, orange, yellow, purple – even green. If you’re trying a new variety of tomatoes, make sure you know what the mature stage is supposed to look like.
For instance, when I first tried garden peach tomatoes, I gave a plant to my mom. She didn’t tell my stepdad what she was growing. He saw the thin skinned, lightly fuzzy tomatoes in the garden, and thought they were sick. He picked the ripe tomatoes and tossed them out.
Mom went looking for her tomatoes and found them gone. They got it sorted out, but she had to wait a little longer to try the tomatoes.
Since I plant several different colors, I always note which plant is where on my garden charts. I also take care not to place plants that have similar size fruit but mature to orange and red next to each other. That way I don’t mistake underripe red fruit for ripe orange fruit.
How to Tell When Non-Red Tomatoes are Ripe
I’ve been growing Green Zebra tomatoes for a number of years. The flavor is excellent and they usually produce a good crop here. As the name implies, they ripen green with stripes.
With green varieties I’ve tried, the underlying color of the green tomato turns more yellow when ripe. The flesh becomes soft and juicy.
Look for a combination of:
- final mature color for that variety
- a slight “give” when gently squeezed
- glossy skin
- good aroma
- easy separation from the vine
If the fruit softens, and smells like a tomato instead of raw greenery, it’s probably ready.
When Your Tomatoes Finally Do Get Ripe
Check out these recipes that will help you enjoy your harvest year round!
- Spaghetti Sauce for Canning
- Home Canned Salsa Recipe
- Homemade Ketchup
- Home Canned Tomato Soup
- How to Can Tomatoes
Other Reasons For Strange Colored Tomatoes
Sunscald – Light colored, leathery patches, generally found on the top or side of the tomato, may be sunscald. Sunscald is due to intense sun exposure. If not spoiled, the rest of the tomato may be used. Sometimes the scald leads to rot.
Blossom End Rot – When the blossom end of your tomato fruits has a small or large black lesion, this is blossom end rot. It’s linked to low calcium availability in the soil.
BUT – even when there is calcium in the soil, too much or too little rain can make it unavailable to the plants. Regular, even watering is best. Read “7 Steps to Stop Blossom End Rot” for more information.
For more tips on dealing with excess rain, see Too Much Rain in the Garden – Managing Wet Dirt and Waterlogged Plants.
You may also enjoy more posts from our gardening section, including:
- Tomato Flowers But No Fruit, or No Tomato Flowers – 9 Troubleshooting Tips
- The Best Way to Save Tomato Seeds
- Grow Tomatoes from Seed – Save Money, Get More Varieties
- How to Grow Lots of Tomatoes Organically
This article is written by Laurie Neverman. Laurie and her family have 35 acres in northeast Wisconsin where they grow an extensive garden and food forest. Along with her passion for growing nutrient dense food, she also enjoys ancient history, adorable ducks, and lifelong learning.
Originally published in 2015, last updated in 2026.
Hi Laurie,
I love your website and find it chalk full of great tips!
We had a colder than normal summer here in Palmer, Alaska, so cold that I had to put heat in my greenhouse in August at night for the first time ever. Although my tomatoes looked beautiful, they simply wouldn’t turn red. I asked my brother-in-law, who is a master gardener, what to do. His advice…stop watering! And it worked. In less than a week all the tomatoes began to ripen.
Thanks for sharing, Marcy! It sounds like you introduced a little stress to tell them they’d better get on with ripening and setting seeds.
I put all of my green tomatoes at end of season in an open cardboard box. They all ripen for some reason not sure why.
The goal of a tomato plant is not to make yummy tomatoes for us to eat, but to reproduce. To reproduce, they need to mature fruit. This means that if a fruit is close to maturity, it will do its best to ripen, provided that other factors aren’t interfering with ripening.
The focus of the article is more on the factors that keep fruit from ripening on the plant when they should be doing so. I collect all reasonably filled out fruit at the end of the season and place them in cardboard trays to ripen, too.
Thanks for these ideas to think about and apply a remedy to. Here are a couple tricks I’ve found or heard that work, to ripen tomatoes at the end of our short cooler growing season. I water the plants less, about the end of August/first of September. It seems to put the plants under a little stress and encourage them to ripen all at once.
A friend said she bends the stems over at the bottom of the plant and the tomatoes begin to ripen too, something her seasoned gardening father-in-law taught her. It may be the same idea of less water or a little stress.
I have also cut off or pulled up very productive stems or plants and hung them upside down in my shed or garage. I can usually get a few more ripe tomatoes throughout the month or tow.
Lastly, I have learned it’s ok to take the plants out, after trying to extend the season with plastic for a few weeks. Sometimes the prospect of cold rain or cold garden clean up is enough to say it’s time to end even with green tomatoes and look forward to learning and trying another way next Summer. 🙂
Thanks, Valerie.
I agree that at a certain point we northern gardeners simply have to throw in the towel and let the garden rest. To every thing there is a season. 🙂
I am in San Diego, California and it is taking *forever* this summer for my tomatoes to ripen. I grow Purple Cherokee and Japanese Trifele, and this year we are having to deal with heat waves (100+ degree weather for days) as well as wildfires. They are still flowering and setting fruit this late in the season, and overlapping with my Stupice. Let’s see which one will give me mature fruit first.
End of September 2020 here in Utah and not one of my larger tomatoes has ripened. The cherry tomatoes have, but I’m likely stuck bringing them in to ripen on the counter. I was wondering if the fires had something to do with it because we haven’t had a single clear sky day in probably a month or more.
As I said, I haven’t seen any official studies, but I can see with my own eyes that the sky here is filled with haze, and the tomatoes are so very slow to ripen this year. We’re much farther away (Wisconsin), but I can see the difference.
I know this comment is a year old but thought id mention anyway, smoke can obstruct 50% or more of UV rays so it definitely can be a reason why things are not growing & ripening as usual!
Thank you! I now know the most possible reason why my entire garden isn’t faring well – heat overload! I’ve noticed sunscald on my squashes, tomatoes are staying green, and I know i’ve used a lot of compost in there and watered enough too. Oh, and my squash plants seem to be dying off in August.
Yeah, the water weather plants like heat, but only up to a point.
Thank you so much! Your post really helped me narrow down the reason why we’ve been staring at green tomatoes for a couple of weeks (or more!). It’s been “one hot summa, don’tcha know?” Yes, I’m mixing New England and Midwest dialects. Gosh, I sometimes I really miss the Midwest. I lived in Minnesota for a few years, and worked with more than a few people from Wisconsin. I hope you’re staying healthy and safe.
You’re welcome, and I hope the weather gets a little more cooperative through the rest of the gardening season. We could use some rain here, as most of the recent storms have been tracking north or south of us.
I didn’t read all the posts so someone may have covered it. You can pick green tomatoes and put them in a brown paper bag and into the pantry. Check every day to find those that ripened in the bag.
Yes, it’s been mentioned. You can also add an apple to the bag if you like, for more ethylene gas to speed ripening.
Where do you find tiger nuts? I have lived in upstate N.Y. for 49 years and I have never seen a tiger here. Do I half to order from Africa?
Thankfully, no tigers, testicles or other nuts are involved in the harvesting of tiger nuts, as they are a root vegetable with a good PR agent. I usually order a bag of Anthony’s tiger nut flour from Amazon (link).
Excellent site! Thanks so much for your time and effort!
You’re welcome, Charlie. I hope you stay a while and have a look around.
Hi
Early Girl Tomatoes
I noticed that two plants had a lighter shade of Green leafs while the other had a darker shade of leaf
having the same prolem with tomatoes not turning full red.
inside is white and the outside is light red
we had a heat wave for two weeks above 90
I picked all and placed them in a brown bage going to put an apple the apple does not have to be cut ?
thanks for your help
Tomatoes generate their own ethylene gas, so you don’t really even need the apple. If you want to speed things up, go ahead and use the apple, but don’t cut it open. That will just make the apple and tomatoes more likely to spoil and potentially attract fruit flies.
Last year in southeast PA was a disaster because of all the rain; it was a little cool also, but the rain rain rain left me with diseased plants and a few mushy tomatoes. This year has been pretty wet also, but not as bad. But it has been hotter than the past several years, and the tomatoes don’t seem to be ripening as well. The big ones just sit, and even the cherry tomatoes we grow, which usually turn a bright red, almost seem more orange or even a little bronze-like this year, and the taste is just not quite as good. So I finally went out on the internet, and came upon your site. Thanks for confirming that the hot weather can slow down ripening. I knew it can slow or even stop fruit set, but your very helpful article seems to confirm what I am seeing about the ripening.
Location: Southeast PA (Bucks County)
Varieties: Park’s Nectar, Supremo, Celebrity, Paul Robeson, San Marzano Redorta
We tend to think of tomatoes as heat loving, and they are – to a point. Just like most crops, they have their “sweet spot” when it comes to temperature. They may do okay outside the range, but won’t thrive.
Thanks for sharing your experience, Mark.
Thank you so much!
You’re welcome. Happy gardening.
I have big boy and big beef steak tomatoes plants planted. This is my first time. I have both planted in large pots. They’ve been planted for 21 days and have different sizes of tomatoes on them but all are green. Not sure how big they are suppose to get before they are developed or if they are suppose to still be green. I planted the plant not the seeds. should I keep waiting or pick one and bring inside? Please help. Thank you!
Be patient. Both Big Boy and Big Beef Steak produce fairly large tomatoes, so they may have some growing left to do. The estimates to fruiting are just that – estimates. Growing conditions can slow down or speed up ripening.
When tomatoes are ready to ripen, before they turn red, they will turn a slightly lighter shade of green. Once you’ve seen it, you’ll know what to look for in the future.
I have a few questions from this years tomatoes.
1. I have found a few during this growing season with no seeds inside. Does that mean they were overripe? They tasted fine.
2. Some this year were very green and slimy around the seeds. They did not smell good. I didn’t eat those. What did that mean?
Thanks so much for your help and time.
I know that no seeds is not a sign of overipeness. Different varieties of tomatoes have different amount of seeds, and tomatoes will also set more or less seeds under different growing conditions. Some tomatoes are now even being advertised as “seedless”.
As for the inside issues, research did not turn up much. I suspect some sort of fungal issue promoting spoilage, given the description. Our neighbors had a similar issue this season due to heavy rains during harvest time. They do not trellis their fruit, and much of it was in direct contact with the ground. We trellis our tomatoes, and did not have similar issues, although we still had foliage stress and splitting from the heavy rain.
You may want to consider trellising, if you don’t use it, and inoculating your garden with bacteria to help crowd out the bad bacteria. There’s more on EM-1 and other helpful bacteria (plant probiotics) in this post – https://commonsensehome.com/organic-fertilizer/
Hi, my tomatoes are red but soft. Even the ones which are partially red….. why? Thanks Betty
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I’m not sure what the problem may be. I tried an online search, but didn’t come up with anything that specifically mentioned soft fruit and no other symptoms.
Has it been very wet in your area? Excess moisture can make fruit soft. Have you grown this variety before? If not, perhaps it’s naturally a softer fruit. That would be odd, but it’s possible.
I planted organic Roma tomatoes this year. We had a hail storm early in the year that made my poor little plants look like sticks, but I tended to them like babies and they have grown like champions. Now I have a bunch of tomatoes, but they’re not ripening. I’m going to try the paper bag with an apple method, but someone told me they weren’t ripening because I’ve planted jalapeno peppers in the same raised bed. Could the peppers be the cause for the tomatoes not ripening?
I’ve never heard of that, and I’ve had peppers and tomatoes planted right near each other in the past with no issues. Maybe they’re simply running late because of the stress earlier in the season?
Hi, thanks for the article! I suspected my bumper crop of tomatoes wasn’t ripening due to a record-breaking cold spring/summer here in South Dakota, but wanted to be sure.
Here’s a trick for “hot housing” your own tomatoes. Go ahead and pick them when they’re full-size, and put them in a large paper bag with an apple or a banana. These two fruits give off huge amounts of natural ethylene gas and will encourage your tomatoes to ripen. Once your tomatoes have some blush, you can remove the apple/banana or leave them to speed ripening. You’ll sacrifice that fruit, but you’ll have ripe red tomatoes!
superb article. my tomatoes are superb on the vine totally green hanging in bunches ready to ripen.
however we have had quite an exceptional couple of months with very hot sunshine taking the temperature well over the norm. I am hoping that it is the temp. that is causing all the problems. everything else is perfect.
If you have some at full growth and enough to experiment with, I might take one or two inside to see if they ripen out of the heat.