Are your tomatoes still green? Try this simple trick now to ripen them – while it's still warm enough

It feels like the year of the grow-your-own tomatoes movement. Thanks to a summer of glorious sunshine and sky-high supermarket prices, everyone who is everyone has tried their hand at growing tomatoes this year; some of whom are now asking, 'how to turn green tomatoes red.'

Even when you've followed all the advice, from when to plant tomatoes out to how to get more out of your plant as it grows, you may still have some green tomatoes that are showing no signs of ripening as the season draws to an end.

Luckily, trusted professional gardener Ish is on hand to offer simple but highly effective tips to help us out with this plant dilemma. "Have too many green tomatoes?" he asks. "There are a few tricks you can use to ripen them."

"If your tomato plant at the end of the season is showing loads of green and only a couple of red tomatoes, then it may feel like all hope is lost, but actually you can still get a really good chance of some red tomatoes before it gets just a little too cold," Ish explains to his followers on Instagram @gardening.with.ish.

He then walks us through a few simple steps to improve the chances of ripening green tomatoes on the vine, starting with thinning out the growth. "Because there's a lot of energy that's being competed for here, and as a result some things will slow down on the ripening," he explains.

To show what that means, he starts by plucking off some red, ripened tomatoes to ensure they are no longer stealing the plant's energy.

"The best thing you want to do is simply pick them off and enjoy them; they're done. If you've got some smaller green tomatoes, they are not going to flourish at this point, so you might as well get them gone. There's no point competing for energy there when you've got bigger tomatoes."

You can still thin out a few extra slightly smaller red tomatoes purely to direct all the plants' efforts towards the most promising ones left on the vine.

"As a result, we allow more light and air through, and energy to the other tomatoes, and that should help them ripen." He does add that it can be highly beneficial to thin out more of the foliage too, again to allow more light to the fruit, "As much sunshine is going to help massively.

If you followed our expert's advice earlier in the summer to stop your tomato plant growing too tall, you might have already tried this thinning trick.

"And last but not least, a final feed of some tomato feed just to give it a little bit of a boost."

"So if you don't fancy making green tomato chutney, give this a go," Ish says, joking at the end of his mini tutorial. And with that, we're all off to thin and feed our tomato plants while the sun is still shining.