tomato growing question: If tomatoes grow best in full sunlight, why are you told that if you bring green?
Posted on Jul 03, 2009 under Best Tomatoes |tomatoes inside you should store them somewhere dark so they will turn red?
You aren’t growing them anymore, you are ripening the fruit (which hormonally, is a very different thing). Ripening the fruit in a dark area, usually means that the fruit is enclosed in something right? That’s the trick right there! Enclosure! The fruit (in this case a tomato) releases a gaseous hormone (ethylene gas) which ripens it. When you enclose it, you trap the gas and cause it to ripen more. Yay!
July 3rd, 2009 at 5:58 pm
I don’t.
I only pick them green to fry them like that, but usually leave them to turn red on their own.
If they are not quite "done" I put them in the west window to finish ripening.
References :
July 3rd, 2009 at 6:30 pm
Tomatoes do GROW best in full sunlight. But I haven’t heard about putting them in the dark for them to ripen. I have always heard you sit them in a window until they turn red (plus, I’ve done this, too so I know it works.) Growing is when the tomato gets larger, ripening is just the fruit (in this case a tomato) changing color - it will not get any bigger once it is picked.
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I’ve been gardening since I can remember.
July 3rd, 2009 at 6:41 pm
When I was a child my dad would pick all the green tomatoes just before the first frost. He would then take five or six of them at a time and lay them on several layers of newspaper and roll them up, twisting the ends to seal them in. Then he would put them in our cellar and all winter long we would have yummy home-grown tomatoes as they slowly ripened.
To answer your question, I have no idea how they turn red in the dark!
References :
July 3rd, 2009 at 7:10 pm
You aren’t growing them anymore, you are ripening the fruit (which hormonally, is a very different thing). Ripening the fruit in a dark area, usually means that the fruit is enclosed in something right? That’s the trick right there! Enclosure! The fruit (in this case a tomato) releases a gaseous hormone (ethylene gas) which ripens it. When you enclose it, you trap the gas and cause it to ripen more. Yay!
References :