Picking Tomatoes at the Breaker Stage

I've been gardening for a long time, but learn new things virtually every day.  I'm going to share something with you that has made a big difference in our tomato quality.  For too long, I was snookered into believing that the best tomatoes are those that ripen on the vine.  You see all the marketing on canned tomato labels that say "Vine Ripened Tomatoes."  So naturally, I would leave my tomatoes on the vine to ripen.

Well, several things happen.  It rains a torrential downpour and by the time you go to pick them, they've split.  Or worse than that, we have huge problems in our area with stink bugs and leaf-footed bugs.  If you leave your tomatoes on the vine, the tomatoes get damaged by these pesky pests.  Here are some of those dreaded stink bugs here:

So what's a gardener to do?  You pick them at the breaker, or break-over, stage.  Right when the tomatoes start to "blush," pick them and bring them inside.

Is it tricky?  Absolutely.  Sometimes you leave them one extra day and they've ripened past the optimal point of picking.  It's not an exact science, but an art.  I don't always get it right.  

I bring them inside and put them on big trays where they'll continue to ripen to perfection.  One day they look like this:

And the next, they're ALMOST to perfection.  As you can tell with the tomato at the 6 o'clock position, I waited a day too long and the rains came and the tomato split open.

What we've seen since implementing this, is higher quality tomatoes and we haven't sacrificed any taste.  The tomatoes ripen on their own off of the vine.  If you want to call them vine ripened tomatoes, that probably falls in the little white lie category, although you might argue that they were ripening on the vine, you just picked them before they were totally ripe.  Research tomato breaker stage and aim to start picking them when they start to blush.  If you don't already do this, I think you'll be pleased with the results.