– Christine Gelley, Agriculture and Natural Resources Educator, Noble County, OSU Extension
When placed in a box together, unripe fruit and veggies can be ripened!
Box ripening is a process that home gardeners can easily do to extend the productivity of their gardens later than the growing season. Although it seems like magic, there are scientific reasons why putting unripe fruits and veggies into a box, putting them on a shelf or under a bed, and finding ripe ones in a week or a few later happens.
The “magic” is attributed to ethylene gas. Ethylene is a growth hormone emitted from plant material as a gas. Ethylene regulates multiple aspects of plant growth including vegetative growth, fruit ripening, abscission (the hardening of plant cell tissue that causes leaf or fruit drop), and senescence (tissue aging).
When you place unripe fruit and actively ripening fruit in a box together, the ethylene released by the ripening fruits triggers the other fruit to begin ripening. This natural process can be manipulated to the gardener’s advantage by timing the ripening of fruits (vegetables) under semi-controlled conditions.
Humidity is very important for the process to work. If conditions are too dry, the fruits will shrivel, and fruit texture will be compromised. If conditions are too moist, the fruits will rot/mold. Ideally, about fifty percent relative humidity will prevent shriveling and rot. Relative humidity can be adjusted in the storage space with the use of a household humidifier or dehumidifier. Many can be set to turn on or off automatically to regulate the conditions.
Once boxed and stored on a shelf in a room that is about sixty-five degrees, vegetables are checked twice a week for ripeness.
Box ripening has proven to be an effective and fun tool for our family this year. With a later planted garden this summer, many of our tomatoes and peppers did not ripen prior to freezing temperatures at the end of October. We harvested green fruits on two occasions and have had great success processing them for box ripening and utilizing them for fresh, frozen, or canned use.
We gathered the green fruits, wiped them clean with a cotton cloth, allowed them to come up to room temperature, and then boxed them with newspaper barriers around each fruit, stacked at a maximum of two layers deep, and closed the lids. Then we stored them on a shelf in a room that is about sixty-five degrees. We labeled each box with the date that they were collected and we check them twice a week. We remove any ripe fruits we find and return unripe fruit back to box storage. If the fruits are blemish free, mold has not been an issue and we have had minimal observations of shriveled fruit coats.
The ability to preserve our harvest and have ripe tomatoes and peppers from our garden that will last through Thanksgiving is an accomplishment for our first year growing a garden plot from seed on our property. We encourage you to try the process for yourself!