Harvest

When to pick tomatoes

The short answer

Pick tomatoes as soon as they are ripe and fully coloured, checking plants every few days. Outdoor plants start cropping in mid-summer; greenhouse plants usually start earlier and go on well into autumn. Take each fruit with its stalk attached.

Once they start, tomatoes ripen a few at a time for weeks. What matters is picking often, keeping the watering steady so the fruit doesn't split, and having a plan for the green ones when the season turns.

When it's ready in the UK

RHS says outdoor tomatoes crop from mid-summer, and that timing depends on the variety, the weather and the size of the fruit: cherry tomatoes ripen faster than big ones. Garden Organic's growing sheets give an average of 16 to 20 weeks from sowing to harvest outdoors, and 12 to 16 weeks under glass.

Vercro's catalogue counts a tomato's growing time from planting out, not from sowing, which is why the weeks below are shorter than Garden Organic's.

Tomatoes: sowing, planting and harvest months in Vercro's catalogue
Window	J	F	M	A	M	J	J	A	S	O	N	D
Tomato: sow indoorsFebruary to April	January: no	February: yes	March: yes	April: yes	May: no	June: no	July: no	August: no	September: no	October: no	November: no	December: no
Tomato: plant outMay to June	January: no	February: no	March: no	April: no	May: yes	June: yes	July: no	August: no	September: no	October: no	November: no	December: no
Tomato: harvestJuly to October	January: no	February: no	March: no	April: no	May: no	June: no	July: yes	August: yes	September: yes	October: yes	November: no	December: no

Months from Vercro's crop catalogue, the data the Vercro app plans with. It allows about 9 to 13 weeks from planting out to the first harvest. Weather, variety and where you garden move every one of these.

379 UK gardeners had recorded tomato in Vercro by 19 September 2026. What Vercro gardens are growing.

How to tell it's ready

Ripe and fully coloured.(RHS)
Smaller fruits first. Cherry tomatoes ripen more quickly than larger fruits.(RHS)

How to harvest

Check plants every few days once the first fruits colour.(RHS)
Pick tomatoes individually, with the stalk still attached.(RHS)

What moves the date

Greenhouse or outdoors. Greenhouse plants usually start cropping earlier than those outdoors, and continue for longer.(RHS)
Variety, weather and fruit size.(RHS)
How many trusses. RHS stops cordon plants once they have set seven fruit trusses indoors, or four outdoors.(RHS)

If you leave it too long

Split fruit. Fluctuating moisture, common in late summer, can make fruit split. Keep the watering steady.(RHS)
Frost. Garden Organic picks any green tomatoes before the first frost.(Garden Organic)

After picking

For freezing, cook them into a sauce first.(Garden Organic)

The season is ending and the plants are still full of green fruit? See how to ripen green tomatoes.

Keep a record of what each bed gave

Log what you pick, and how much, bed by bed. Vercro keeps the record, so next year you know what worked where, and Today shows what your crops need next.

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Where this comes from

Crop windows, growing times and plant families come from Vercro's own curated crop catalogue, the same data the Vercro app uses. Where a published source says something different, we show both rather than choosing the convenient one. Reviewed 19 September 2026.

Tomatoes: grow your own, Royal Horticultural Society. Read 19 September 2026.
Tomato (outdoor) growing sheet, Garden Organic. Read 19 September 2026.
Tomato (indoor) growing sheet, Garden Organic. Read 19 September 2026.
Harvesting and storing vegetables, Garden Organic. Read 19 September 2026.