Green fruit

[Alpo]

How do you tell when green fruit is ripe?

Ripe oranges turn orange. Ripe bananas turn yellow. Ripe lemons turn yellow.

Unripe pears are green. Ripe pears are green. How do you know when they're ripe?

There's a guy around the corner with a pear tree in his front yard, and it is full of fruit. I assume that the fruit is ripe, as several of them have fallen off the tree. But is there a better way to tell?

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Subdeacon Joe]

Pears don't ripen for eating while on the tree.  https://www.starkbros.com/growing-guide/article/pears-ready-to-harvest

 

https://www.exploratorium.edu/cooking/icooks/01-26-04.html

[Rex M Rugers #6621]

How about limes , Alpo ?

Rex 

[Subdeacon Joe]

6 minutes ago, Rex M Rugers #6621 said:

How about limes , Alpo ?

Rex 

 

 

Ripe limes are yellow. 

[Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984]

Thinking about this question I looked up Granny Smiths.

 

Quote

Q: I have a producing ‘Granny Smith’ apple tree. This year I have a lot of apples on the tree and want to know when I am supposed to pick them. 

A: Since Granny Smith is a green apple, it’s hard to determine ripeness by color. Determining ripeness by taste is the way most people would answer. Granny Smith is a late-maturing apple so start tasting yours sometime in late October.

A scientific method to determine ripeness is to spray an iodine solution onto a cut apple to see how much of the fruit has changed from starch to sugar. Take an ounce of iodine and mix it with 15 ounces of water and put this mixture in a spray bottle. Slice an apple in half horizontally through the seeds. Spray the apple flesh with the iodine mixture. A fully ripe apple will stay white, an unripe apple will turn black. The ideal time to pick is when the inside of the apple is white, the outside edge of the apple is white and there is a small band of black between them.

Another method is to count the numbers of days since full bloom, if you remember when that occurred. Granny Smith is usually ripe at 165 – 180 days after full bloom.

Ripe apples fall easily from the tree; not much twisting is needed. When you slice into a ripe apple the seeds will be brown.

 

 

[Larsen E. Pettifogger, SASS #32933]

When I open a can of pears they are usually sort of an off-white.

[Pat Riot]

When I was a kid we knew green pears were ripe enough when you could easily pluck them from the tree. Sometimes even then you had to wait a couple of days before they were fully ripe. You could also tell by the firmness, or the lack thereof. 
 

 

[Go West]

I like my grapes green and grape jelly blue.

[Allie Mo, SASS No. 25217]

Limes are yellow.

[Warden Callaway]

Blackberries are red when they are green. 

[Alpo]

10 minutes ago, Warden Callaway said:

Blackberries are red when they are green. 

They are green before they are red.

[Badger Mountain Charlie SASS #43172]

On 6/26/2021 at 6:06 PM, Subdeacon Joe said:

 

 

Ripe limes are yellow. 

I thought limes were green and lemons were yellow?

But then I live in the polar regions, so what do I know. 

[Alpo]

I suspect, from statements made in this thread, that limes are picked before they are ripe.

 

When I was a kid my grandmother in California would occasionally send us baskets of fruit. This, I understand, was illegal. Various states did not want pests from other states introduced into their area. They used to have inspection stations on the California border. You could not bring fruit into the state. And in the early sixties you could not mail fruit from California to Florida. Legally.

 

Anywho. One year Grandma sent us some lemons. They were huge. Bigger than a softball. And they were not sour. They were sweet.

 

While I do not know - I am not a citrus grower - I have long suspected that the little lemons you get in the store are picked before they are ripe, and that is why they are sour. But if you leave them on the tree until they actually ripen, they will become sweet.

 

It appears that limes are treated the same way.

[Subdeacon Joe]

38 minutes ago, Badger Mountain Charlie SASS #43172 said:

I thought limes were green and lemons were yellow?

But then I live in the polar regions, so what do I know. 

 

The green limes we typically find in stores are unripe.  When ripe limes are light green or yellow.

 

Now, for real fun, consider that in Spanish the words for lemon and lime      may or may not be the same.

[Subdeacon Joe]

41 minutes ago, Alpo said:

Anywho. One year Grandma sent us some lemons. They were huge. Bigger than a softball. And they were not sour. They were sweet.

 

It sounds like they may have been some sort of hybrid.  Our neighbor has a lemon tree that seems to have three varieties grafted on it.  Some are huge, have a slight grapefruit scent to the, an incredibly thick layer of pith, and are somewhat sweet tasting.