Seeing someone on The Big Dig putting banana skins in the planting holes to provide food, before planting his tomatoes, prompted a thought. I've seen it suggested that putting a banana in a drawer with green tomtoes at the end of the season helps them to ripen faster, because the banana gives off a gas that promotes ripening (ethylene???).
As an experiment, I've put banana skins on the soil surface of several of my greenhouse tomatoes. The tomatoes do seem to be ripening quite quickly this year. But then it could just be the hot weather! Any thoughts, anyone?
(My daughter used to have a race each year with one of her friends, to see who could grow the first ripe tomato. My daughter found she could get an edge by hanging two or three 'vine tomatoes' from the supermarket on the first truss, just as they were starting to ripen. Same principle.)
Tomato ripening
Moderators: KG Steve, Chantal, Tigger, peter
Hi Again Ken,
I tried the banana skin on a truss....result dried up banana skin attracting fruit flies.
Banana skin on a truss inside a plastic bag ....result mushy/rotting banana skin.
No banana skin ....result first tomato to ripen.
I think the variety was Money maker, which is reputed to be a slow ripening tomato.
I tried the banana skin on a truss....result dried up banana skin attracting fruit flies.
Banana skin on a truss inside a plastic bag ....result mushy/rotting banana skin.
No banana skin ....result first tomato to ripen.
I think the variety was Money maker, which is reputed to be a slow ripening tomato.
I don't suffer from insanity .... I enjoy it!
Vivianne
Vivianne
I always put bannana skins in the pots with my tomatos. they contain lots of potassium which toms love, dont put the fruit in too as that doesnot work as well ( ive tried it leaves tend to yellow).
who needs the gym when you have an allotment
Growing an early variety helps. I've been picking 'Red Alert' bush grown outside on the lottie for the last week.
Beryl.
Beryl.
Thanks, everyone. I agree with Beryl that you can indeed get earlier tomatoes by picking the right varieties. In fact I put a note on the forum a week or so ago saying that I am enjoying my first outdoor tomatoes from a bush variety called Latah. It's a new variety to me, but we're delighted with it - early, prolific, and good flavour. The point about the banana skins was just to see whether they might hurry up the tomatoes in the greenhouse. I think they did the trick as we have been getting more, sooner, if you follow my meaning, than in previous years. But the weather is a factor, too. If the banana skins are to work, I think they probably need to be put under the plants when the first tomatoes are just beginning to change colour.
Anyway, those banana skins are now buried under a topping-up layer of garden compost!
Anyway, those banana skins are now buried under a topping-up layer of garden compost!
Surely it's just exploiting the fact that bananas are rich in potash. Any potash will help them along. If it's banana skins these would have to rot to do any good. Sunshine will help, so will relatively high temperatures as ripening is akin to rotting.
Later...
Are you trying to ripen the fruit using ethanol emitted by most ripe fruit. The correct way to do this is put the ripe fruit(apple,pear, banana etc.) and the green fruit in a bag or box. You won't manage it on the plant.
Later...
Are you trying to ripen the fruit using ethanol emitted by most ripe fruit. The correct way to do this is put the ripe fruit(apple,pear, banana etc.) and the green fruit in a bag or box. You won't manage it on the plant.
Hi Allan - All I'm saying is that I was trying to help the ripening process along a little bit through the gas given off by the banana skins. And I think it did help a bit. You say it wouldn't work outside an enclosed environment such as a drawer or a bag. However, as I mentioned above, my daughter was able to speed up the ripening of her tomatoes (as compared with a friend growing plants that were part of the same batch of seedlings) by hanging some supermarket-bought vine tomatoes over the bottom truss. Whether or not it works may relate to how much air circulation there is.
Not exactly a scientific test. Perhaps I should have said that it wouldn't work to the same degree. If the two are hanging together there could well be that there was some ethylene there to help. I am still woundering whether such ripening would just be the colour of the fruit or whether one also gets the full richness and sweetness of tomatoes ripened on the plant.I made an interesting discovery about the tomatoes now in many shops, sold as a truss "on the vine". In my most helpful catalogue, reading between the lines all the tomatoes sold for "vining" had associated with that description the words long shelf life, furthermore nothing about taste or flavour. Out of curiosity last year we bought some like that, and some more this year. In both cases they were bullet-hard, we kept them and they didn't get any softer as ordinary fruit would, the flavour was disgustingly poor, so it seems that the whole idea is one to avoid. Far from bringing the full flavour of plant-ripened fruit to the consumer it has the opposite effect and as far as we are concerned they can stay on the shelf until they rot (if they are still capable of that!)
Allan
Allan
I think you will find that Ethylene Gas is given off as a part of the degradation of the Banana itself and to merely use the skins is a little pointless as you have gone and eaten the thing that is actually generating the gas you are after.
I also feel that it is pointless trying to make comparisons of home produced Tomatoes with those available in the Supermarkets. Lets face it when you pick your Tomatoes they are ready to eat and they would not stand up to the rigour of transportation and the handling necessary to get the Tomatoes on the shelf. Just thank your lucky stars that you as the grower are privileged. The greater majority of people have not got the facilities to grow their own.
Put another way if you can't beat the Supermarket efforts you should hang your head in shame.
But the Supermarkets do their best and I for one applaud their effort even if I do not appreciate their produce.
I also feel that it is pointless trying to make comparisons of home produced Tomatoes with those available in the Supermarkets. Lets face it when you pick your Tomatoes they are ready to eat and they would not stand up to the rigour of transportation and the handling necessary to get the Tomatoes on the shelf. Just thank your lucky stars that you as the grower are privileged. The greater majority of people have not got the facilities to grow their own.
Put another way if you can't beat the Supermarket efforts you should hang your head in shame.
But the Supermarkets do their best and I for one applaud their effort even if I do not appreciate their produce.
JB.
We still have market stalls, other shops, Farm shops so most people can still get tomatoes worth eating if they don't get lazy and demand that they buy all their fruit from the supermarket chain at one visit. I was trying to explain that what we call here the 'bouncy' tomatoes are not the way to go. They have been developed on the idea that just because the best tomatoes are picked direct from the growing plant that somehow they can send the plant to the shop and it would amount to the same thing, by accident or design the shelf life got drawn into the specification and in my opinion the result shows the folly of the basic idea. The ordinary tomatoes in supermarkets, while not being up to homegrown or local grown are not that bad, why pretend that they can do the impossible to a formula.
This year we had only about 3 days between the frozen tomatoes of 2005 and the new pickings of Gardeners Delight which are delicious. So too was the first Supersweet 100 and the Sunset which have now started to come in quantity, 2 punnets sold. Surely there cannot be many people who cannot find room for a growbag or two on a balcony or somewhere. Alternatively cannot the government help the small grower like myself to produce worthwhile fruit, instead of all those millions subsidising the big farmers a few pennies to cover running costs instead of setting up expensive publicity machines like Adventa to sell non-existant local produce, or to buy petrol to get us to work as planning regulations prohibited us from living where the work is.
We have just had our glossy mgazine GWLAD, once again all to do with livestock, nothing on horticulture.
This year we had only about 3 days between the frozen tomatoes of 2005 and the new pickings of Gardeners Delight which are delicious. So too was the first Supersweet 100 and the Sunset which have now started to come in quantity, 2 punnets sold. Surely there cannot be many people who cannot find room for a growbag or two on a balcony or somewhere. Alternatively cannot the government help the small grower like myself to produce worthwhile fruit, instead of all those millions subsidising the big farmers a few pennies to cover running costs instead of setting up expensive publicity machines like Adventa to sell non-existant local produce, or to buy petrol to get us to work as planning regulations prohibited us from living where the work is.
We have just had our glossy mgazine GWLAD, once again all to do with livestock, nothing on horticulture.
Johnboy is correct about the ethylene. apples too have the same effect. try stabbing an old apple onto a cane and draping a pea bag over the apple and drawing the string around the cane under the apple to deter the fruit flies this will help ripening but i normally use this as a late season ploy before grubbing up the plants. also if you have problems with ants getting into split toms this will help too as they seem to prefer apple juice to tomato juice.
I heard a long time ago that a lot of long life supermarket tomatoes were actually from GM crops, but have not had this verified by a reliable source.
I will ask around, whether it is true or not the supermarkets just can't compete with freshly picked fruit.
I will ask around, whether it is true or not the supermarkets just can't compete with freshly picked fruit.
I don't suffer from insanity .... I enjoy it!
Vivianne
Vivianne
Hi Vivianne,
There are no GM products sold in the UK at present and I think you have got hold of some 'Rooftop Rhetoric' and are passing on something you have not and cannot verify.
Do you really think that FoE and SA would be fooled like that because as much as I dislike both organizations they would be on to that in a flash.
The one thing Allan seems to forget is that he lives in a Small City with agriculture and horticulture surrounding it and work very close to a small market town and whereas they have local produce and Farmers Markets and other markets the greater majority of the country do not have these facilities.
I wonder just how far his Tomatoes would travel and having travelled how long before they would not be classed as merchandise unfit for sale.
There are no GM products sold in the UK at present and I think you have got hold of some 'Rooftop Rhetoric' and are passing on something you have not and cannot verify.
Do you really think that FoE and SA would be fooled like that because as much as I dislike both organizations they would be on to that in a flash.
The one thing Allan seems to forget is that he lives in a Small City with agriculture and horticulture surrounding it and work very close to a small market town and whereas they have local produce and Farmers Markets and other markets the greater majority of the country do not have these facilities.
I wonder just how far his Tomatoes would travel and having travelled how long before they would not be classed as merchandise unfit for sale.
JB.
Whether the 'bouncy' tomato is derived via GM or non-GM breeding techniques is irrelevant. In my opinion GM is merely a device to speed up what could have been achieved conventionally. The evidence remains that a tomato has been specially bred to a formula aimed to solve the problems Supermarket trade and the rigours of mis-handling, storage and transport to which their tomatoes are subjected and yet with this gimmick of on-the-vine claims to have brought the idea of being freshly picked and in doing so they have ended up with something which has none of the desirable properties of flavour and texture which one would expect just from cosmetic appearance.
They would have done far better to reorganise and promote the British tomato industry locally. There is virtually no city area in the whole UK that is not within an hours driving of open country where tomatoes could have been grown given the incentive of an assured market.It's only too easy to pick up the phone and order tomatoes from Israel, Chile,Kenya, Holland, Poland etc. probably with implications of undesirable air miles.For the record my days of tomato picking were at Slough, betweeen the Great Western mainline railway and the Grand Union Canal and not far from M4 with its direct route to the heart of London.
Allan
They would have done far better to reorganise and promote the British tomato industry locally. There is virtually no city area in the whole UK that is not within an hours driving of open country where tomatoes could have been grown given the incentive of an assured market.It's only too easy to pick up the phone and order tomatoes from Israel, Chile,Kenya, Holland, Poland etc. probably with implications of undesirable air miles.For the record my days of tomato picking were at Slough, betweeen the Great Western mainline railway and the Grand Union Canal and not far from M4 with its direct route to the heart of London.
Allan