The One Thing You Should Always Do With Cherry Tomato Plants Before A Storm

A good rain can often feel like a reward for avid gardeners because it means one less round of watering that you're responsible for. On the flip side, when a gentle rain becomes a harsh storm, it can cause a world of trouble for your plants. Cherry tomato plants, in particular, are susceptible to cracked or damaged fruit due to an onslaught of heavy rain. Sometimes this damage is unavoidable. However, if you know that a storm is on its way, you can use genius tips to protect your plants before a heavy storm hits — in this case, simply harvest your tomatoes.

Picking nearly ripe tomatoes before a storm will help save them from growth cracks or rain checking. Although you can still technically eat tomatoes that have been damaged in this way, they certainly won't look as appetizing, and they may not ripen fully either. Rain checking is most likely to happen when your plants are particularly dry and then inundated with heavy rainfall all at once. While all tomatoes, including cherry tomatoes, are susceptible to this type of damage, it most commonly occurs on larger, fresh-market varieties.

Picking nearly ripe cherry tomatoes before a storm will help save them from growth cracks or rain checking. These cracks, typically caused by heavy or persistent rainfall, look like small brown lesions radiating from the top of your tomato. They can also appear as a group of circular cracks concentrated around the top of the fruit. These cracks will typically have a rough, leathery feeling when you touch them. Rain checking happens when a sudden burst of rain oversaturates your tomato and causes the flesh to grow faster and burst through the skin. Picking the fruit before this happens is the only real way to prevent it. 

Mature green tomatoes and those that are nearly ripe are the most important to pick ahead of heavy rains, as they are the most susceptible to damage. However, even immature green tomatoes can be affected in certain cases. It's up to you whether you harvest everything on the plant or just the mature fruit.

If you're worried about harvesting your tomatoes when they're still slightly green, don't. There are a handful of ways to ripen your homegrown tomatoes indoors so you'll still end up with juicy, vibrant fruit. Needing a sunny windowsill for your nearly ripe fruit is an old gardening myth about ripening tomatoes. Although using sunny windows certainly works, it's not necessarily needed. There are plenty of other ways to go about ripening tomatoes indoors, such as storing them in a cool box lined with newspaper.