Monday, November 14, 2011

Why Am I Always The Last to Know?

Remember me whining about mentioning how late and short our summer was?  Yah.  Me too.

Our neighbor, the one with the garden we all envy, gave each of the boys a little tomato plant.  I had Kerry put them in a big tub, right outside his office where they would get lots of sun.  Of course, the deer promptly ate them down to the nub and then Kerry put a cage around them.  So the poor things got kind of a late start anyway.  And by the time we left on vacation, mid-September, we had a nice big tomato bush... with not a single tomato on it.

Fabulous.

And when we came home, mid October?  About 20 hard, green balls.  With the weather deteriorating and the temperature dropping, I told the boys to pick them all and bring them in the house.  We lined them up in a sunny window, and there they sat, for weeks.  Hard little green balls.

Then one of my free brain cells got busy and dredged up a memory from (probably) high school chemistry.  Bananas give off a chemical as they ripen that will ripen other fruit around them, so you want to separate other fruit from them to prevent it getting over-ripe.

Well, tomatoes are fruit, aren't they?  Hmmm...

I grabbed three bananas from the fruit bowl and arranged them among the tomatoes.  And guess what?

We have ripe tomatoes!

So there ya go.  I'd call it a helpful hint, but I'm guessing you already knew.

5 comments:

Crystal in Lynden said...

Had no idea, but I haven't attempted gardening other than nurturing what we have. I think that's a very neat tip.

leah said...

I didn't know until we accidentally discovered the same thing just before our first hard frost! I didn't realize they'd ripen off the vine until we brought them indoors and they did just that! Now I know to harvest those little suckers before the cold gets to them.

I hope you have some delicious tomato sauce later on!

debbie bailey said...

I'm a new visitor to your blog. I had to come see what a blog looked like written by somebody who herded grasshoppers! Cute, very cute!

The dB family said...

I must have learned this years ago too. I knew I like bananas for more than just their bread :o)! Enjoy those tomatoes!

Blessings!
Deborah

Herding Grasshoppers said...

Debbie Bailey - Always glad to have a new visitor :D And I see you have kids and grandkids, so you probably understand the herding grasshoppers concept!