The true measure of any home gardener is their first tomato. Not just any tomato, but one of those giant heirloom tomatoes they proudly display on social media. The earlier in the summer the better, which leads gardeners to do all sorts of crazy things to get bigger plants in the ground faster. We’ve built temporary greenhouses and put heaters in our tomato beds — all to get a tomato earlier in the year.

To make matters even more complicated, our tomatoes do unpredictable things every year. A consistent variety will suddenly perform differently, or the seeds will fail to take. There is one perfect way to solve both problems: save your favorite tomatoes and get them earlier in the season next year by overwintering them.

You won’t be growing tomatoes in the winter – you’ll need a greenhouse or lots of plant lights and hand pollination for that, and you risk bringing lots of insects into your home. Instead, you’ll send these plants into hibernation.

Experienced tomato growers prune their plants starting in late July to prevent more flowers and tomatoes from growing that won’t have time to ripen in the fall. Tough, but necessary. Ideally, you’ll have time to ripen your tomatoes before you get a steady 40°F at night, but if you don’t have time, you’ll either have to settle for fried green tomatoes or try cutting off a decent amount of stem with the tomato and hanging it upside down indoors to ripen. If the tomato is even slightly blushed, it will likely ripen on its own, without the stem inside.