The last green of the season

Gardeners who grow more than a few tomato plants brace themselves for the bounty, when they can't seem to eat, cook, preserve, or even give away tomatoes as fast as they ripen.

And then come all the ones that don't. Before the first frost, you have to dash into the garden and pluck the globes before they freeze. This time, the tomato harvest is a beautiful shade of green. Unlike the ripe ones, these green tomatoes aren't good raw, which makes the deluge that much more challenging. You can't just throw them into a salad, dry them, or can them. They have to be cooked first.

Paul Shoemaker knows: He grows almost 50 tomato plants of several varieties in his West Newton backyard. Even though some gardeners have complained that this summer's cool, wet weather made for a bad season, Shoemaker didn't see it that way. "Tomato plants do tend to suffer from viral and mold diseases in this type of weather," he says, "but I've had a really good year."

Most of his plants -- including patio tomatoes and a variety called Striped Germans -- have stopped producing new fruit "and have pretty much decided to work on ripening the existing tomatoes," said Shoemaker, 40, who owns Activacres, an organic lawn and garden care company. But he expects to see as many as 200 green cherry tomatoes, and some green Romas. And that's when his mother, June, will start making jam.

She first heard the idea on Paul Parent's gardening show on 96.9 FM Talk about eight years ago. "When the frosts came along and the tomatoes were still green, there wasn't much to do with them except give that recipe a try," says June Shoemaker, 78, who lives with her son. "It was an immediate success."

The same firm, crunchy texture that makes green tomatoes unappealing raw helps them hold together when cooked. The jam recipe could hardly be simpler: She cooks the tomatoes with sugar, stirs in raspberry-flavored gelatin mix, then pours them into jars. The gelatin does the thickening that pectin would, and the jam is chunky and sweet with small, soft seeds. This year, she and her son imagine they'll can at least six jars, enough for a few months' worth of spreading on toast and English muffins in the morning.

Shoppers at City Feed and Supply in Jamaica Plain can get their green-tomato fix another way -- pickled. City Feed's owners, Kristine Cortese and David Warner, asked neighbor Deborah Taylor, who makes and sells her spreadable fruits under the label Deborah's Kitchen, to use their recipe and make a product with their store's name on it. The results are tart slices of soft green tomato that City Feed also puts on its "Farmer's Lunch" sandwich, where it's combined with sharp cheddar and green apples.

Taylor, 55, doesn't grow tomatoes herself but buys the green ones from local farms. She has been so happy with the pickles that she introduced a sweet-red-pepper relish, and she's experimenting with another green tomato recipe -- a relish made with orange juice and coriander.

Shandal Grayson, 32, grows a tomato variety called Early Girl in the Madison Park Village Community Garden, and she expects to be left with plenty of green tomatoes as the season winds down. She knows exactly what she'll do: Pull out the cast-iron skillet and start frying. She got the recipe for the classic Southern dish from her mother, Virginia, who grew up in Alabama. Its appeal, already firmly established, spread after the success of Fannie Flagg's 1980s bestseller, "Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe," and the resulting movie.

As with the pickles, the dish of battered and fried rounds wouldn't work with ripe red tomatoes, which would turn to mush. "At the end of the season you really get sick of eating tomatoes, and you have got to find something else to do with them," Grayson said.

While fried green tomatoes make great sandwiches (particularly with bacon for a twist on BLTs), Grayson usually eats them as a side dish with garlic bread, soup, or meat. She loves them so much -- simply dredged in seasoned cornmeal and flour before frying -- that she doesn't always wait until the frost to indulge. "I'll usually pick some earlier in the summer before they turn red just so I can fry them up," she says.

Paul Shoemaker knows the feeling: "We're thinking about picking some tomatoes early to replenish our jam supply," he says. "My mom really misses it."

Joe Yonan can be reached at yonan@globe.com. Deborah Taylor's pickled green tomatoes are sold at City Feed and Supply, 66a Boylston St., Jamaica Plain, 617-524-1657, and at farmers' markets in Marblehead, Waltham, Cambridge (at the Charles Hotel), and Franklin.