Having a garden really opens your eyes to how produce naturally grows, and it’s a lot different than what’s found at the store.
Grocery stores offer “vine-ripened” tomatoes, but as I recently learned, even those are not truly ripened while attached to the tomato plant. The branch is cut, but the tomatoes are still attached to the “vine” so they can market them as such. They are then ripened by ethylene gas, as it travels across country.
As my tomatoes are growing and ripening, I’ve noticed that the fruit that is closest to the main branch will ripen first, then ripen outward toward the end of the row.
This morning, as I was harvesting my tomatoes, I got to thinking about the perfectly-colored-red ripened tomatoes on the vine at the grocery stores (like the “grape” variety) and how unnatural it is to have the whole vine ripened at the same time.
At least that’s not how it happens in my natural backyard garden!