As those golden summer nights give way to fall's crisp chill, your tomato plants are likely nearing the end of their peak season.

While your vines may still be heavy with fruit, the clock is ticking on warm weather, and it’s time to wind down your tomato patch and put your garden to bed for the season.

How you care for your fruit and plants now will make all the difference in getting a juicy late-season crop and healthy soil to set your patch up for next year.

To avoid wasting your harvest, Danielle Sherwood, managing editor and master gardener at Epic Gardening, recommends picking your fruits before the first frost warning. She says, “As long as they are not completely green and hard, they will ripen indoors.”

So, how do you ripen green tomatoes? Sherwood advises placing your unripe tomatoes in a single layer in a cardboard box, and adds, “Check them every few days and toss any that go soft.”

While Andy Thewlis, farm manager at The Inn at Little Washington, has another method similar to Sherwood’s, but instead of placing them in a cardboard box, he uses a paper bag and stores them at a temperature between 70-75°F.

Ethylene can also speed up ripening, so adding fruits like ripe bananas, apples and avocados, which release a lot of the gas, can help your tomatoes blush!

Top tip If you want to rescue the hard, truly immature ones, Sherwood suggests trying fried green tomatoes or salsa verde.

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