A fruity tale

The last of the home grown tomatoes are ripening well next to the bananas.

Bananas are one of the fruits that produce Ethylene, a chemical substance that promotes ripening, and so by placing the tomatoes next to a fruit that naturally produces this gas will promote the ripening.

Nowadays, most commercial warehouses, ships and trucks are fitted either with ethylene absorption technology or ethylene generation machines to help control the ripening process of many fruits. This is not an artifical process as Ethylene in itself is a naturally produced gas and fruits will produce it anyway without intervention.

And that is how my green bananas became yellow the following day, and why the tomatoes are turning red.

It's amazing what you can learn from a blip.