bigboard wrote in message ...
David W.E. Roberts wrote:

Hi,

bored with waiting for all my outdoor tomatoes to ripen.

I know just what willl happen - nothing, then thousands ripen overnight.

So I have placed a plasic bag over a truss (please reassure me you didn't
get the same mental picture which just flashed through my mind) with a
single ripe (but split) commercially raised cherry tomato in the bottom.

In theory the ripe tomato should give off waves of ripening essence and
encourage the ones on the plant to ripen.

I am also considering another test using a banana skin, as bananas are
suposed to be kings of the ripening.

As a control, I suppose I should also just put a plastic bag over a truss,
in case the mini-greenhouse effect is what speeds ripening (if it does).

Anyone else tried this kind of thing (and still at liberty)?

Cheers
Dave R

--
I've never tried bagging my trusses I'm afraid. I did eat my first two
outdoor tomatoes last night though. The others look as if they will all be
ripe next tuesday at 3 o'clock.

I'd b slightly concerned about the humidity in the bag. Might it make the
fruit rot? And it might play havoc with your truss.

I haven't got even a jocker any more; but I'd counsel against the
plastic bag for the reasons already stated. I mean, try it with your
_feet_ for a few days! Paper should do no harm at all. In Japan, where
they like their apples pink rather than red, the paper-bag routine is
common practice. But I doubt if it'll do much good: let us know what
happens, compared with control plants where you just leave alone. I'd
like to be wrong.

I wouldn't have used a split fruit as a source of ethylene, though: it
probably harbours lot of eager little fungal spores. Same for banana
skin: use a perfect specimen of a whole fruit. Not that the spores
won't be there anyway, but just that they'll have had a chance to
multiply.

All this is just an object lesson in not using F1 hybrids in ordinary
amateur practice: for some crops, we real people want a long
succession, not a commercially-convenient whoomph. Having said that,
when I've tried F1 tomatoes, it didn't seem to make much difference.

Mike.