Harvesting Grape Tomatoes

Sweetelle in different maturity. Kyra was bored.

Sweetelle is the variety of grape tomato we plant at 248x52.  Even though tomatoes are perennials, most farmers including us cut off the plant every year because tomatoes taste better when they are younger.  Depending on the customers, the preferable size differs.  But we don't want it too small because it will shrink and look ugly.  We also need to be careful about the sunburned tomatoes because they look ugly and don't sell.

A saggy grape tomato.

Grape tomatoes with sunburns.

The cause of sunburn, according to Kyra, is water on the tomato and strong sunlight.

Note that we pick not only the red ones but also some orange or even partially green tomatoes.  In the very top picture, the tomatoes should be no greener than the third one from the right; that one barely passes the mark.  This is because tomatoes get redden by themselves as they sit on the shelf.  Also, we can quicken the reddening by covering tomatoes with CO₂ according to Frantz.