Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Float or sink

Last night I started putting the garden to bed for the year, removing plants and cleaning things up.

Back in the spring I planted a couple of pepper plants and a variety of tomatoes.   As they started growing I placed a stake next to each, and trained the plants onto the supports. However, when the summer heat wave hit I wasn't as diligent.  Now the plants were sprawled all over each other, and it was hard to tell where one stopped and another one started.  I was confident there weren't going to be any more vine-ripened fruits this year.

Nothing beats a ripe red tomato from the garden, but I always manage to find a use for the end-of-the-season green ones, too.  They go into a large bowl on top of the refrigerator, where some of them will turn red. The ones that don't eventually go into the bag in the freezer for making stock.

I began my cleanup job on the far right side of the bed.  The first plant held a few large green fruits.  I took them off, tossed them in a  bucket, then pulled up the plant.  Took less than five minutes. The next two plants, however, had dozens of small grape fruits.  I began removing them one at a time, decided that would take forever, and pulled the bunches off in clumps.  They, too, went in the bucket, as did the rest of the tomatoes I came across and a couple of green peppers.  I kept going until our "green" recycling can was completely full.  The majority of the job was done, and the rest will wait until next week, when the trash has been picked up and the can emptied.

When I was finished the three-gallon bucket was half filled with unripe tomatoes.  I brought the bucket into the kitchen and removed innumerable green star-shaped sepals, then ran water into the bucket to clean the fruits.  After the bucket was full, I noticed that some of the tomatoes were floating, and others were at the bottom.  Surely that had to mean something.  A quick Google search gave me the answer...Green tomatoes sink. Ripe (or I guess in my case, partially ripe) tomatoes float.

Now I know.

12 comments:

  1. I did not know that! I have not had the heart to pull them up yet! I have one cherry tomato plant that is so full of the tiny fruit. Every day I get a bowl full. Today I gave them to the first camper I checked in. I will think about those tomatoes in the middle of winter, but I would rather share my bounty that have it go to waste. I have tones of sauce in the freezer already. You can fry the green tomatoes. My grandmother always used cornmeal, but I like self-rising flower. They crisp up nicely. Then I sprinkle a little parmesan on top.

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    1. You're lucky. The last few tomatoes I've picked from the vines may have been red, but they had NO flavor.

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  2. Interesting!

    I just cleaned up my tomatoes too. Except here green ones get fried! The babies love them so we are having a small feast. And like Kathy (above) I too like using self-rising flour.

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    1. I like fried green tomatoes, too, but the vast majority of my unripe fruits are cherry and grape varieties, and every recipe I've seen uses full-size fruits. Might have to do a little research.

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  3. I had no idea. It sort of reminds me of old and fresh eggs where rotten eggs float. How interesting to know that ripe tomatoes float.

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    1. I HAVE heard that about eggs, but I've never tried it.

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  4. I wonder why the ripe ones float? Google's just amazing it will probably tell me.

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    1. It has something to do with the denseness of the fruit.

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  5. That's interesting to know about the tomato, and good for you to be diligent and get your outdoors work done. Here I am on this end hoping for a few more nice days so I can do the same, no veggie garden, just my flowerbeds.

    That's also an excellent idea to use your tomatoes for stock, I've got a few in the fridge which I should do the same with... thanks for the idea!

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    1. I've always kept a bag to hold vegetable peels, fat, and bones. When it gets full, I throw them into the stock pot and cook it for a couple of hours.

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  6. I was cleaning a bucket of both regular tomato varieties and also had a bunch of yellow cherry tomatoes in it. All of the partly to mostly ripe regulars floated. All of the cherry sank. Wonder why?

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    1. Rob, thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment! It's an interesting question. I assume the cherry fruits were nice and yellow? Maybe they needed even more ripening.

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