We had a short freeze that killed several but not all of our tomato plants. We've plucked the green tomatos from the weary plants and have boxed them. A friend informed us that green tomatos will turn red if kept in a box or wrapped in newspaper because they emit a chemical that informs them all to ripen. Our friend says that by doing this we can have tomatos through December. Fingers crossed!
4 comments:
My wife and I did it last year and it was great. We are small prduce farmers here in Va. and have just gotten to know Jay and Ryanne. They turned us on to your blog,our is passagefarm.blogspot.com/
Hi Todd,
I saw your blog and subscribed to its feed.
I'm curious why your big draw is on your power bill. 568kWhrs is a lot. We have brought ours down to 150kWhrs for the home. Our electric vehicles and metal work bring it up a little, but it is still easy for us to stay under 300kWhrs even during our hot summers.
We have to run a walk in cooler for our produce and we also run an electric fence. Plus were still a bit spoiled which we are working on. We are about to start trying to heat the house and water with a solar water collector that we will run through an already existing radiant baseboard heating system. I like that you are posting about your solar adventures I will start doing ours as we progress.
Yep, this gas is called ethylene and many fruit exude it when ripening and it cues other fruit to ripen. You can do this in a paper bag as well, and including a ripening banana or apple in the bag will speed up the process. I did this with some green tomatos and they were ripe in 3-4 days.
-Nat
Your friendly neighborhood plant biologist
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