• Pickled green cherry tomatoes. Yum!

The fall rains have come, and that's prompted home gardeners like Slog reader Luckier to wonder what to do with all their tomatoes:

Goldy, when are you going to start a weekly gardening column? Because I had to rush to harvest my tomatoes today b/c of the rain, and I immediately thought "wait, what would Goldy say?" All of us urban farmers need your help.

I'm flattered. But as a matter of fact, I did take some tomato action over the weekend, as the picture above illustrates. The problem facing tomato gardeners is two-fold. First, ripe tomatoes tend to split (or "crack") their skins when wet, and then rot on the vine. Very depressing. Second, with the rains, inevitably comes the dreaded late blight, in which the entire plant, fruit and all, quickly succumbs to a messy rot.

The first trick is to plant (relatively) blight and crack resistant varieties like Stupice. I always have a couple Stupice in my garden, and they'll usually continue to ripen fruit well into October. Right now I'm picking the ripest fruit but keeping the firm ones on the vine. So far, they're surviving the rains just fine. As for my other slicers, the romas are played out, and my one beefsteak, Pruden's Purple, only has a few tomatoes left on the vine. As soon as they start to turn color, I'm plucking them.

But my cherry tomatoes, they're trouble. The Sungold I'm eating as fast they ripen, though their mostly split before they make it off the vine. That's okay. If they're still firm, they're still good eating. I haven't tasted a bit of mold yet. The Sweet Million are a bit more crack resistant; so far so good. But I permitted a one "volunteer" cherry tomato plant to mature in the garden this year, and this one cracks if you so much as breath on it, so Sunday I stripped it clean and pickled all the green ones. My bounty: Five pint jars of what in a few weeks will be a delicious, crunchy treat. (I'm also told they're great in martinis, but that's not my drink.)

My adaptation of a recipe for dill green tomato pickles from the 1948 edition of the Kerr Home Canning Book:

Pack firm green tomatoes into pint jars, adding to each 1/4 teaspoon pickling spice, two cloves garlic, and a few small pieces of celery and green pepper. Mix 1 quart water, 1 pint white vinegar, half cup kosher salt, and a bunch of dill in a pot and boil for five minutes (enough to fill six pint jars). Divide the dill between the jars, and fill with the hot brine. Screw lids on tight. Should be read in about a month.

The jars generally self-seal, and the original recipe says nothing about refrigerating, but I refrigerate mine out of both precaution, and the preference for the firmest, crispiest bite. Enjoy.