Upgrade Your Tomato Countertop Storage With A Cheap Bakery Bread Tray

Whether you are an avid, experienced gardener, or a newbie to planting your own crops, every harvester will hopefully face this abundant problem: Where do you put all of your produce? Tomato plants are perfect for this conundrum; cherry tomato plants produce dozens of fruits in one cluster, while the larger varieties will yield upwards of 10 pounds per plant each season. Although that's great for canning and cooking, it's bad for your countertop storage. You can protect your tomato plants in the yard with simple upgrades, but now it's time to protect your picked tomatoes inside the kitchen.

There's an easy and affordable solution that saves kitchen counter space, while allowing your tomatoes to ripen off the vine or wait for their turn to be canned. A bakery bread tray (also known as a bakery crate) is a sturdy and stackable plastic tray, typically with walls about 6 inches high. It's just enough height to store even some of the larger tomato varieties without squishing them between the stacked trays, but it's short enough that you can stack multiple trays without taking up much vertical space. The lip on each tray will keep your tomatoes from rolling off, while the handles on the side make it easy to lift and transport your stack as needed. It may not be the most stylish countertop produce storage solution, but it is one of the more efficient and practical. As a bonus, bread trays are often sold in bulk, so you can buy as many or as little as you need for your harvest time.

After a summer season of caring for your plants, the same care should go toward storing the fruits of your labor. Users of bakery bread trays note it is wise to add padding to the tray bottoms. While the latticed base is great for bread, it can bruise ripening tomatoes or tear the skin. Layer a dishcloth, heavy paper towel, cardboard, or newspaper at the bottom to protect your tomatoes. This storage method will work to ripen green tomatoes as well; place green tomatoes on the soft layer and cover with another layer of cloth or paper towel. The green tomatoes will ripen in between the layers within a couple of weeks.

For ripe, red tomatoes, do not cover them with another cloth, but feel free to try simple tricks to store them to keep them fresh longer, like covering the stem ends with tape or flipping them upside down. Since these trays can be stacked, it allows you to sort and ripen green tomatoes on a bottom tray and display red tomatoes on a top tray. Fresh red tomatoes are easy to access when canning or cooking when stored on the open tray.

Admittedly, plastic trays are not the most attractive of storage options, and there are plenty of stylish alternatives for storing fruit and veggies, like an under-cabinet produce hammock that serves the same purpose. But harvesting tomatoes is temporary, and countertop storage methods for fresh tomatoes will be too. Store your bakery bread trays away after the season ends so that you can use them next year. They are durable enough to use multiple times, and as long as you're planting, there will always be tomatoes.