Monday, September 21, 2009

How to Ripen Green Tomatoes

A week ago my husband accidentally knocked some of my tomatoes off the vine as he was mowing the lawn. Needless to say I was not too happy with him, as two of them were huge...and all of them green. I wasn't sure if they were a loss or not, as this is my first time ever growing tomatoes.

So I did some research on line and many people talked about placing them in a south facing window. Well, these were pretty green and I felt the sun would do more harm than good. So I decided to try one suggestion and sit them next to ripened bananas.

There were four really green tomatoes when I started this experiment, so, I sat them next to my old bananas (to make banana bread with later), and waited. Well, a few days ago, I took this photo. One of the large tomatoes is amazingly turning to an orange color, with another one not too far behind it.

Four days later, the large orange one is now red, and the other large green one is now orange. The smaller two are still green but showing signs of fading. Wow, ripe bananas really work...you'll just have to put up with the gnats though!

1 comment:

Sheryl said...

Hey Jen,

Interesting as we talked brown bags work too, never heard of bananas but it seemed to work for you. Wonder if you washed the bananas when you first buy them and get rid of the eggs if you would eliminate the fruit flies?