Had these sitting in a box with several bananas for a week. The bananas are all but brown, and most toms are still green. So, more bananas?
Or separate the still green ones?
by darkpheonix262
5 Comments
tomatocrazzie
You don’t need bananas. That isn’t a straight up myth since ripining bananas do produce ethylene and ethylene is used commercially to artificially make tomatoes turn red, but this takes way higher concentrations of ethylene than are going to be produced by any amount of bananas in a box and ethylene does not really ripen the tomato, just forces it to start turning red. This is a large part of why many store bought tomatoes are terrible.
Tomatoes that have started to “break” will turn red on their own. Depending on the variety and how far along they were when you picked them, it can take a couple weeks. But if you see no progression after about a week, those are likely not going to ripen.
SoggyAd9450
It only works if they are past a certain point of development. If they are picked too soon, they’ll never ripen. Luckily you can eat green tomatoes, they are tart and delicious: fried green tomatoes, green tomato soup, green tomato tart, salsa Verde, thin sliced on sandwiches, I’ve even seen a recipe for a sweet green tomato pie
DreamSoarer
I just kept mine layers in boxes and checked every few days. I removed the ripest red ones that would like start to rot if I left them in, but left the ones that were beginning to ripen or were almost nearly ripe but has no risk of going rotten.
In my experience, keeping a few redder ripening ones mixed in with the green ones helps to ripen the others.
Green ones that have stated to turn really hard, wrinkly, or spongy go into my compost. I’m not big on green tomato recipes, so if they never ripen, they go into compost.
Jessicaplays1127
I use potatoes to ripen. I’m growing Brandywine tomatoes and have had some around the size of a newborns fist still ripen they just take a while. Mine took about 3-4 weeks to ripen while the bigger ones took a few days. Never thought to use bananas definitely adding this to my ripening list. As others suggested you could use the green tomatoes for other things, or you could take a chance and see if those green ones develop.
5 Comments
You don’t need bananas. That isn’t a straight up myth since ripining bananas do produce ethylene and ethylene is used commercially to artificially make tomatoes turn red, but this takes way higher concentrations of ethylene than are going to be produced by any amount of bananas in a box and ethylene does not really ripen the tomato, just forces it to start turning red. This is a large part of why many store bought tomatoes are terrible.
Tomatoes that have started to “break” will turn red on their own. Depending on the variety and how far along they were when you picked them, it can take a couple weeks. But if you see no progression after about a week, those are likely not going to ripen.
It only works if they are past a certain point of development. If they are picked too soon, they’ll never ripen. Luckily you can eat green tomatoes, they are tart and delicious: fried green tomatoes, green tomato soup, green tomato tart, salsa Verde, thin sliced on sandwiches, I’ve even seen a recipe for a sweet green tomato pie
I just kept mine layers in boxes and checked every few days. I removed the ripest red ones that would like start to rot if I left them in, but left the ones that were beginning to ripen or were almost nearly ripe but has no risk of going rotten.
In my experience, keeping a few redder ripening ones mixed in with the green ones helps to ripen the others.
Green ones that have stated to turn really hard, wrinkly, or spongy go into my compost. I’m not big on green tomato recipes, so if they never ripen, they go into compost.
I use potatoes to ripen. I’m growing Brandywine tomatoes and have had some around the size of a newborns fist still ripen they just take a while. Mine took about 3-4 weeks to ripen while the bigger ones took a few days. Never thought to use bananas definitely adding this to my ripening list. As others suggested you could use the green tomatoes for other things, or you could take a chance and see if those green ones develop.
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