WHAT WORKS BETTER AND WHY: Re: A apple will help bananas turn color;-)

[Guest guest]

Plastic bags are fine.  Paper bags don’t give off Ethylene Gas (EG). They are

simply a way to

keep the gas in a confined space.  What’s important are three things: dark,

warm, moist.

 

DARK   forces the

Chlorophyll to turn from green to yellow in bananas and to red in tomatoes.

During this long process EG (Ethylene Gas) is produced.  It comes out of the

‘pores’ in the skin of

apples, tomatoes, bananas and various other fruits.

 

WARM   speeds up the

bio-chemical reaction process.  So – to

a point – the warmer it is, the faster things will ‘ripen’.  If by ripen

you mean ‘soft’.  Cooking will also soften things up, but so

fast that an entirely separate type of process takes over.  Warm is from the

mid- 60*F to the

mid-to-high 70*F (18*C – 25*C).  Remember that each fruit or veggie comes

from a specific environmental

climate – so ‘warm’ to us is ‘room temp’ to others. And hot to us is

warm to

others. 

 

HUMIDITY   keeps a

fruit moist.  If you keep fruit in a dry

environment you’ll notice that it dries out.  If you keep it in a moist

environment you’ll notice that it stays moist

and will start to mold. You have probably noticed that moist warm air seems

hotter than dry warm air – so a humid 95*F (35*C) day at 95% humidity can be

stifling in New York or Baltimore, but 95*F in the middle of Nevada at 5%

humidity is on the high side of warm. 

 

The CONCEPT is to put the fruit into an environment which

will speed up the ripening process and not compromise the taste or texture of

the fruit.  When many fruits begin to

ripen they put out EG and this hormone triggers the same hormone reaction in

other fruits. Thus an orchard, or a tomato plant will start with one fruit

beginning to ripen, then more and more until the orchard or plant just seems to

explode into ripe fruit.  That is how

potent a hormone EG is. 

 

So if you confine an unripe fruit with a ripe fruit, the EG

will trigger the mechanism in the unripe fruit to start producing EG and it

will ripen faster, that first fruit is just the ‘trigger’ mechanism.  The

more EG there is the faster the unripe

fruit will ripen. 

 

If you can confine the EG being produced, the higher the

concentration, and the faster the other fruit will produce it’s own EG –

increasing the concentration of EG in a ‘do-loop’ – or and out of control

spiraling

effect.  So by confining the EG you

start an exponential reaction in the unripe fruit.  But you need to trigger

that, and you do it by putting in

something you KNOW is producing the key that opens the door to the production

of more EG – an apple.  Or a ripe

tomato.  Apples are better because they

last FAR longer and don’t decompose as rapidly.

 

DARK adds to this process.  With no light the chlorophyll starts to change

color.  To yellow in bananas and to red in

tomatoes.  So not only are you introducing

a hormone that flips the switch to ripen the fruit, you are adding to the

process by speeding it up by lack of light and the fruit turns the starch into

sugar to get the energy to power this process.

 

HUMIDITY keeps the air warmer (water holds more heat than

air, thus you put ‘water jackets’ around plants early on in the early spring

to

keep them from freeze back while they are still tender seedlings) longer (air

dissipates heat faster than water, that is one reason hot and muggy in New York

or Washington DC is very comfortable in Nevada).

 

So the real idea is to get as much EG in as small a space as

you can – you want a HIGH CONCENTRATION of EG.  You want to add to this

process by getting the chlorophyll to turn color

and release more EG. And you want to speed THAT process up by keeping it warm

and moist – conditions that life just LOVES!

 

 So you put a LOT of

apples in with your bananas, keep the volume of the space as small as you can

so the concentration of the hormone EG rises rapidly, keep it dark and warm and

moist.  Plastic is a far better choice

than a paper bag.  It is not as porous

so the gas stays inside, it can be flatted out and sealed better than a paper

bag.  And with a damp crumpled paper

napkin or towel inside you keep the humidity up.  You can then place the

plastic bag in a warm dark spot, or put it

in anything that will keep the light out and set it somewhere where it is

warm.  Since heat rises, you can put it

on a top shelf, or near a space heater or in a warm closet, or on top of your

hot water heater. 

 

In a clear plastic bag you can SEE when the bananas begin to

ripen—turn their starches into sugars.   Here’s a guesstimate of the

starch-sugar percentage  for bananas:

 

Green – 80% starch,  7% sugar

Yellow – 25% starch,   65% sugar

Spotted – 5% starch,  90% sugar

 

HOWEVER THERE IS ANOTHER PROBLEM!!!!!

 

Apples out-gas the hormone EG through “pores’ in the

skin.  Nearly all apples are now waxed

with a vegetable based wax.  This makes

them nice and shiny and pretty to look at.  It makes the skin nice and

smooth.  Even ‘organic’ apples have this wax because it is made from

veggies.  The wax does more than make

the apples LOOK nice, it allows apples to be stored in large warehouses without

them all ripening at the same time and going ‘soft’ on you.  So there’s a

good commercial reason to wax

apples.  IT KEEPS EG FROM LEAKING OUT!

 

So you have to wash you apples to get the wax off.  It’s not a difficult wax

to get off, but it

has to come off none-the-less.  So get

some nice hot-side-of-warm water in a dish pan and put in about 2 DROPS of dish

DETERGENT (dish soap takes more) per gallon – so a 3 gallon dish pan will take

about 10 drops of detergent.  We often

use FAR more than what we need when we wash dishes.  You can use more if you

want, but after a certain amount the water

doesn’t get any wetter.  (Meaning the

surface tension of the water stabilizes and doesn’t change no matter how much

more detergent you put in).  Let the

apples sit in there and swish them around a couple of times to get the wax

warmed up and starting to lift off the apple and into the water, then use a

nylon veggie brush or

nylon ball and GENTLY scrub the apple to get the wax off and open up the

‘pores’.  Rinse the apples well.  REALLY well.  Handle them gently –

but do get the soap out of the dimples and

pores where the wax was.  Towel dry them

well – this picks up the rest of the wax and soap and water that's down in the

pours.  You can do this twice if you want, but once is generally enough. 

 

NOW when you put those apples in with the bananas and seal

up the plastic bag, they WILL work a LOT better.  Not all apples are created

equal.  Some ‘ripen’ slowly – your ‘Delicious’ varieties ripen FAR

faster

than say a Granny or a Pippin.  As

a general rule, the softer the apple, the faster it’s release of EG, and the

more firm or tart an apple the slower it releases the EG.  Another way to look

at it is the shorter the 'keep' time is for an apple, the more EG it puts out. 

So your long keepers, generally the 'tart-side-of-sweet' apples - like Fuji,

keep longer.  Long keepers do a slow steady out-gassing, while your short and

medium keepers put out more hormone-- and red puts out more than green, soft

puts our more than crisp.

 

So, there’s how it happens.  The apples can touch the Bananas - remember

it’s the CONCENTRATION of

the hormone that you want to be high so more apples than Bananas is OK.  If you

put them in large (1 gallon+) freezer

bags squeeze out the air after you put in the damp paper towel or napkin.  ( it

doesn’t have to be paper, a clean

cotton rag will work just as well) Put it in something that keeps the light out

– the more light you keep out, the faster they will ripen.  Put them in a

warm place – the longer they

are warm the quicker they will ripen – so a nice constant temp is better than

a

hot-cold cycle.And if you can't put them in a sealable plastic bag, you can

tightly wrap the paper bag with a black plastic garbage or trash bag to keep the

light out and the gas in. 

 

Give it about 3-4 days and have a look.  Remember that even flashes of light

can stop

a process – Ever notice how a nice bare clean soil will sprout ‘weeds’

after

you till or roto-till a field or row? That’s because some species of seed need

just a flash of light – some only milliseconds (literally)  – to ‘turn

on’ the sprouting

process.  So seeds can lay buried in the

ground for YEARS and when you till them up, just a quick flash of light will

start the germination process. So the less you look at them in a bright light,

the faster they will turn ‘ripe’. 

 

As technology changes we often misunderstand why we do

things.  Before paper bags there were

newspapers to wrap the fruit in. It had nothing to do with the paper, it had to

do with the light and concentrating the EG around the fruit.  The paper bag

allowed an apple or other

fruit to be added to collect the EG from that ripe fruit and switch on the

chemical process that forces the unripe fruit to ripen faster.  There’s

nothing magic about the paper bag—in

fact some plastic bags are made from polyethylene which breaks down and would

actually add a tiny bit of EG to the process --. 

 So, don’t focus on the paper, focus on the

process.  It’s hard because starting

with the Nixon-Regan era, the push for the  ‘back to basics’ process

overpowered the broad base of knowledge

students were exposed to -- entire generations of students never learned this

stuff – The Golden Age of Science Education was in the 1960’s with a brief

peak

during – but ‘basic education’ (the 3-R’s)  is cheaper than

teaching Science, Geography, Cultural Anthropology,

History, Health, or Music. OK, off my soap box,  Hope this works for you.

 

Dream Well. Travel Well.  May you Walk Your Path in Beauty.

" Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. " Carl Sagan.

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>Hi.

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>Okay, did the cardboard box thing. Made a video.

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>Will give it a few days. Thanks much <snip>

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