Topic: banana skins to ripen tomatoes?

[clackvalve]

Hi,
  My grandfather used to use banana skins to rien  his tomatoes in his greenhouse. Unfortunately he is no longer with us so i cannot ask him how to do it.

do i just hang the skins over the leaves close to the tomatoes.

does it work and how?

regards
ade

[PlymouthMaid]

It will be something to do with the gases released by the bananas (ethylene?). I would imagine so long as the skins are near the tomatoes it could work. What a good idea.

[steve76]

You need to get some really ripe bananas going to black and then put your unripe toms in a paper bag with the bananas..

You only really need to do this at the end of the tom season when your plants are dieing and the fruit is still green.

Its the gasses from the banana the helps to ripen the toms

[tonybloke]

just throw the banana skins on the ground around your plants. they give off ethylene gas as they decompose. ethylene helps to ripen fruit.

[Sally A]

Agree with tonybloke, a few ripe skins around the base of a plant do tend to encourage it to get a wiggle on when it comes to ripening.

[raisedbedted]

I always used to leave a few red Toms on the plants to 'give the others the idea' and it always seemed to work.  Others used to laugh at this.  It turns out that ripened Toms also give off Ethylene and so have the same effect.

[chriscross1966]

If you have oxy-acetylene kit to hand a quick squirt of the gas from that will do the same thing.... acetylene is another name for ethylene (an older one).... try not to blow yourself up though.......