Experiment: Preserving fresh tomatoes in wood ash for up to 6 months?
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- Опубликовано: 8 сен 2024
- Help support our channel: / backtoreality
At the end of last season, we decided to test a method of tomato preservation that we discovered in the following article:
wire.farmradio....
The article claims that the tomatoes, packed in wood ash, were preserved for up to six months without any negative effects.
This video documents our experiment, as well as our results.
"I don't want to waste people's time waiting in suspense for nothing"
Sir, you are sent from heaven
I'm so accustomed to having the title reveal delayed, I just automatically jump a few minutes in every time now. Thankful SOMEone gets that!
Okay. Full stop. Dude reveals the answer one minute into the vid and then gives you the option to stick around and learn about it. Full watch, like, and sub. Just for that.
Haha you must be new around here. Been here an hour & counting haha
Yep!!
A rare gem on youtube in the vast see of click bait waste of time videos.
My new absolute Favorite channel! Especially when Noah makes his appearance 💕
For real
I have a friend who planted a tomato plant in a 5-gal bucket. When it was due to frost, she brought the plant inside and kept it in front of her patio door/window where it still got plenty of light. In the summer, outside and in the winter, inside. I visited her in April the year the plant had seen 2 summers and going on the 3rd. It was big and lush and beautiful and produced year round! At that time she lived in Colorado.
I heard of peppers doing that, too.
This experiment 100% worked. The result of the experiment is that we know the technique doesn't work.
Any experiment in which you learn something is a success.
At least in his conditions. There may be something about the place where the guy in Burundi store his (aridity perhaps?) or the type of ashes used? Best to stick with canning on this continent for now I guess.
Amen!
My great grandma did this, she wrapped them in newspaper, then put them in a box with cold wood ash, then in the root cellar. But she checked that all the time, and only did it with green ones. As they ripened she'd use them. And she never stored other stuff in the box with them.
Agreed. Works fine with green ones, once they are ripe this trick is a no go. They will just continue to the ripen, spoil, and dry out.
Janine Park - yeah, too bad this guy decided to alter the experiment.. Seems like he's an idiot (about this) to me.
Feriin It was an experiment..no one is ever an idiot when they experiment...
@@coolwater55 That's not true. If you add too many variables and have no control, the experiment might as well be considered a waste. All that we know is that the methodology used in the video doesn't work. We have no clue why. Not much value there. Idiot is a bit strong, but this wasn't a good test.
Fish I understand about methodology and controls..but you know..Einstein..Bell..Madame Curie and many more pushed those boundaries many times..and sometimes a person just tries...
As a kid I used to watch my mom picking up the whole tomato vine from the ground with lots of green tomatoes on it and hang them upside down in the cellar ceiling. She used to pick them up all winter long as they become ripe.
What about accelerating the tomato to very close to the speed of light? Time dilation will mean that while we age for 6 months the tomato will hardly experience time passing at all, it will literally still be fresh.
Plus, assuming we accelerate them away from us, the resulting redshift will cause any less than perfect tomatoes to appear fresh and ripe as well. You may be onto something here!
or just using a gravity well
Just use a flux capacitor in your DeLorean and go back in time when they were perfect.
Tried it and the tomato got stuck one second in front of me. Some times I can smell it and it still smells fresh even though it was 10 years ago.
another not often considered problem with this time traveling tomato's to preserve their fresness, is how it would effect our cell phone's and internet. let me explain. if i send my tomato's into the future. the location from which they are sent will not remain static in space. if sent 6 months forward, the earth will be on the other side of the sun where they will freeze solid in space becoming space junk satellite killers on re-entry... the earth , sun, milkyway are not standing still.
My grandmother used to wrap green tomatoes in newspaper and store in a cool, dirt-floored cellar, they would keep for several months.
J. Niles..I see.true he wanted to keep the flavour..but mostly didn't want to pay for store bought..
.my impression was to use the tomatoes fresh for as long as possible rather than canning them..but maybe they will do better next year. 😊
He did ask people who watch to offer their suggestions according to experience.
I was hoping the experiment worked. Thank you for sharing your experiment. The only time I eat tomatoes is during summer when they are fresh.
I just laid out green tomatoes before frost got them one year. Normal room temperature. Most of them ripened well and I was eating them till Christmas time. Stayed comparably tasty. Better than store bought.
So how long do they last if you wrap them in newspaper? Would they last past Christmas?
Oh wow I just noticed this video was from 6 years ago.
I thought back in the day, that people pulled the whole tomato plant when tomatoes were big but still green, at the end of the season, and then laid them on burlap bags or was it newspaper, in the dark, in the basement. They would have tomatoes at Christmas and a while after that.
You've discovered the ancient Egyptian's method of mummification on the cheap! Haha! Hey, it was worth a shot. Thanks for sharing!
Lol, gotta love unintended discoveries! :)
Thanks for watching!
Uncle Lar lol
KIng Tutmato!
Thank you for the honesty at the beginning of the video. It's really uncommon to see a channel that treats its subscribers well instead of just clickbaiting us. Thanks and see you again :)
So right! It makes me WANT to watch to the end, and we don't have to watch a huge intro or a homestead's morning chores.
How interesting! The problem might be the tomato variety. In Africa and the Carib. I noticed the skin on tomatoes and lettuce varieties for example, they are able to withstand the heat even in transport to market. Many people who do not have refrigeration so they store produce by burying it (when green or not fully ripe) in terracotta pots layered with sand or ash underground. So, perhaps ditch the box and try a terracotta pot. I would also say keep peppers and tomatoes apart as they will trigger further ripening I believe. I might try this with variety similar to Roma or Amish paste that is a bit more firm and naturally waxy on the exterior. Cheers from an urban farmer in the CA Bay Area :)
I absolutely love your experiments. Whether good results or bad results you still show it all. Some people wouldn’t show a failure but fortunately, the two of you don’t see it as a personal failure but see it as nothing ventured, nothing gained. I, too, love to experiment in the garden. You just don’t know until you try. At least I can learn from your experiments & sometimes save myself some time. Keep the videos coming. You’re great teachers.🍅
Hallo! I am living in Sweden and I grow Piennolo tomatoes that last for up to 6-7 months after being picked. These tomatoes grow naurally at the sides of vulcano and can be keept inside on a plate or hanging from the sealing until you want to eat them. I ate my last tomatoe from the summer this febuary and it was great. Try Principe Borgese or Ponderosa, these are two of the most common one. Good luck!
cool
That is amazing! I'm looking this up right now!
I also live in Sweden and grow Piennolo tomatoes. I really like them! There weren't any tomatoes left after a month, so I have to grow more next year.
That's amazing! So all I need is a Swedish volcano, and I'm in business!! Although I must admit, Swedish Volcanoes are pretty rare in Tennessee, USA ...LOL
@@ezrider1967 I was wondering if that was an integral piece of the puzzle, too. I'm in Oklahoma, so it's gonna be pretty hard to source, I suspect. But I'm gonna try them anyway 😁
The sudden influx of people makes me believe you have triggered RUclips's algorithms in some positive way. Great video and channel by the way, I'm surprised I didn't find this channel sooner.
Can also come from someone with a huge following on fb linking to the video.
Hello we have a tomato variety that is fresh up to one year.
Just tie it down the stem and hang it in an airy place.
Is a variety only from here a island of Mallorca Spain.
The name of the tomato is (tomate de ramallet)
Lander De Bevere there is another kind of tomato available called "vesuvio" which is smaller than yours but has similar storing properties.
Can you please explain what you do with the tomatoes with little more details
Is it a thick skinned variety? Is it good for slicing and eating? What does it taste like?
I tried many seeds from spain they all fucked up specially the coccumber
@@Mothana808 As fucked up as your spelling ;)
Try wrapping green tomatoes in newspaper at the end of the season. Check them frequently and use them as they ripen. They won't last 6 months but you should be finishing them around the holidays.
Fresh tomatoes at Christmas? Count me in!
Thanks for the tip, we will absolutely try this!
Back To Reality try some with stems and some without.
I don't know if there is a difference or not.
with stems they take a little longer to mature
I agree. I can get October-harvested tomatoes to supply me into March most years. They aren't as good as sun-ripened summer tomatoes, but they are better than store tomatoes, for sure.
I did that with mine in the basement. They ripened very well - I was able to get perfect fresh tomatoes a month after the garden was done and they tasted every bit as good as those I'd picked ripe. (Now, if only I can only figure out how I managed to get so many the first season I grew them, lol.)
I'm wondering if they could have gotten too cold and frozen which could have caused them to split providing a way for the ash to migrate inside and dessicate them.
Thanks for giving the experiment a try. Using the wood ash to preserve foods seems to make sense from a pest perspective, as not many critters would crawl through it to eat your 'maters... However the wood ash seems to do nothing for maintaining water content and slowing enzymatic activity. Here's a few ideas to consider trying next year: 1. coat tomatoes in thick fat or wax before submerging in ash (especially the stem end) 2. store tomatoes with some vine still attached 3. harvest tomatoes a little earlier (maybe experiment with various stages of early ripeness) 4. blanch tomatoes before storing 5. try different tomato varieties, and most importantly, 6. monitor process more closely and note state changes. I think those are some pretty crucial variables that could seriously alter the results... and keep you busy for a lifetime lol
Really great quality video production. If you’re not doing this professionally, you should be.
Thanks bubbaallred! I REALLY appreciate that :)
He's right. In fact, I'm wanting to start my own channel about cooking and nutrition. I'd hire you.
Hear hear! (Or is it here here? Here hear?) Excellent production and content quality.
Agreed. You have a good presence and present it in a logical order and in a genuinely exciting way. I believe that giving the information that it didnt work made it more interesting to be honest. Alas, wouldn't it have been nice to have "fresh" quality homegrown tomatoes year round?
@@digitalranger4259 I think it's "Hear here", like "hear it here now all ye townsfolk, noble and common, to this here announcement"
My thought on the matter would be around humidity issues. I freeze, can, and debydrate. With dehydrated, they take up even less space if I put the dehydrated tomates into the bullet and turn it into tomato powder. Use it in chili and spaghetti, stews and soups. Best for growing over winter inside would be cherry tomatoes...but nothing tastes like the August ones which have suffered blistering heat, winds, rains, etc. Sorry not much help...but nice try. Some things like tomatoes are what keep us old timers waiting for spring to finally spring so we can get out there and get them in the ground. I don't notice a huge difference with peppers grown inside over winter, but your electric bill will go up due to increased lightining needs.
I really like your perspective. Fresh tomatoes do give us one more reason to look forward to warmer weather. And perhaps having such a small window for fresh tomato consumption, actually makes the tomatoes more special? This was an unexpected twist... Thanks for your insight!
The new LED lights are much less power hungry and I actually used aquarium lights used for water plants and has good success with my tropicals overwinter inside with no difference in the power bill. BTW I had the lights on for 14 hours a day. I will try this set up for winter tomatoes! :)
The LED lights were 4 foot and under $35 US dollars from Amazon.
Thank you for sharing the experiment. I have never done this. Aside from canning, freezing, and drying, there’s only one way we’ve had fresh tomatoes past the season.
We picked them green on a cool morning, wrapped them in newspaper, and then stored them in a cool place in a single layer.
Checking them once in awhile, we’d find some had ripened and we’d eat those. If they get warm, be ready to can the lot! I’m not sure how long we were able to eat fresh tomatoes, but it was well into winter.
Good luck with further experiments.
I can’t speculate on the results, but it was super interesting to those of us always interested in ways to preserve food. Two thumbs up!
This video made me smile- great experiment. I've been canning forever, and it always happens- Late Feb (here near Buffalo, NY) I miss fresh tomatoes and buy one at the grocer. Always disappointed. I come home and crack a jar of my own tomatoes and remember why I do it. My "must cans" are now homemade V-8 and tomato soup. I think the waiting and the seed starting and all of it- is rewarded by that first red tomato in late July- and makes us appreciate it that much more. I eat tomatoes and salsa non stop for 2 good months to get my fill until the next year.
I've had surprising success by saving my dill pickle jars and juice/brine, then adding those surplus sweet 100 cherry tomatoes that I can't eat fast enough. watching your 3 year old up to her wrist in pickle juice chasing around the last tomato like a cat after a goldfish was just a bonus. the tomatoes will keep until the next years tomatoes are about ready to fruit.
As soon as this guy said that the experiment didn't work, I paused the video, liked, subscribed, and then of course resumed the video. I wish more channels and videos on youtube could be similarly honest and upfront... that would be great 😋
Thanks mate, it was an interesting watch 🙂
Hello, my husband and I are new to your channel, but we found this very interesting. His comment was that maybe you waited too long. The other guy says 'up to' six months, that doesn't mean you're going to get the full six months. How long do tomatoes last normally? A month? So even if you only doubled that, and stored them at the end of the season, that's an additional two months that you would then have tomatoes for (either for eating or selling). An interesting video; got a like from some new watchers. Hope you do try this again. It would be worth it if it worked.
just reading through your comments.. learned so much.. thanks for doing this experiment!!
Tells us right in the beginning what happens. Liked and subbed just for that, then watched the entire thing.
So grateful you did this. Takes a special kind of person to perform these experiments and share them. Thanks so much. Well done.
I've heard the story you were speaking of and wasn't sure if it would work then on one of the health sites I'm on they were talking about how to keep tomato's fresh and they described how keeping green banana's next to tomato's keeps them fresh longer due to the banana's off gases as it's ripening it slows down the ripening process on the tomato's
Dean Murray you might have had your wires crossed. Bananas off gas ethylene which ripens fruit pretty quick. Green bananas don’t produce as much as brown spotted bananas. Your tomatoes would last a lot long away from bananas.
@@LandmadeFL You're assuming that because the off gassing ripens certain things, it ripens all things. That's possible, but it may also be too assumption. In the same way refrigeration preserves the flavor of some things, refrigeration destroys the flavor of other things. Like I never refrigerate tomatoes, or peaches, bananas, berries, onions, or potatoes. Yet, I do refrigerate celery, lettuce, & carrots. And I only refrigerate a single apple a short time before I eat it.
Just because off gassing exists & affects one way, doesn't mean it can't affect tomatoes another.
Sherlock, is this a clue....? I've heard so many things about the gases produced by banana peels, I wonder if there was ash AND banana peels near the tree?
We are so damn lucky to have almost all vegetables fresh through out the year.
First video of yours that I've seen, just want to say that your disclosure of the results at the start made me more inclined to watch the whole videp through, which i did, I appreciate the honesty.
Whilst woodash is anti microbial it wouldn't stop any microbes such as fungi from growing inside the fruit. If you waxed and/or sprayed the fruit as it ripened on the fine then repeated the experiment at a lower temperature it might work better but I doubt it's possible to properly preseve fresh produce that long.
Maybe an insulated heates greenhouse would be the way to go?
I'm pretty spoilt here in Australia you can grow tomatoes year round in some parts of the country.
I'd love to give you a big old 'raspberry' but I don't know how to spell that sound. lol
Videos like this one are my favorite, and authors gain my highest respect. I would only hope there would be more authors like You around.
I know that grocery store tomatoes are picked green and allowed to ripen on the trucks. Perhaps the ash is an inhibitor, and a green tomato would have lasted longer. There are also separate types of tomatoes developed for immediate flavour vs shelf life.
Growing up in the Midwest, at the end of the season, we used to pick all of the green tomatoes. Then individually wrapped each tomato in newspaper. Then put then in a strawberry flat cardboard box in a single layer. Then we put the box on a shelf in the basement pantry.
Two months later, the wear red and ripe. Not as good as fresh off the vine, but better than the grocery store.
I'm 64 and when I was a kid we used to pick the tomatoes at the end of the season green wrap them in newspaper and put them in a cool dark place the ripen slowly
Dear Paula, Dear Derrick,
I discovered your channel yesterday and have watched and enjoyed many of your videos since. This one surprised me a lot! Your love for "fresh-picked, home-grown tomatoes has made you go 180° opposite of "Back To Reality". Is "eating seasonal" not a a part of the forgotten reality?
Wouldn't the hiatus imposed by eating seasonally let you enjoy fresh-picked, home-grown tomatoes next season even more?
Go for some amazing 'ripe-picked home-grown dried tomatoes' which will be also amazing! Just learn about how to dry them properly. preserving food by drying is an enjoyable and useful topic which fits extremely well to what you are doing.
Cheers,
TT
Hi TT. You're right, eating seasonally is absolutely part of our "back to reality" philosophy. But given our climate, food preservation is obviously still an important aspect of our self-sufficiency goal - and we had hoped that this natural method might prove useful. That said, since posting this video, we have shifted our thinking somewhat. Because you're absolutely right, having such a short season of fresh tomatoes, simply makes us appreciate them that much more. Keeping them in their own time, allows us to live more fully in the current season, and current moment.
Thanks for watching, and thanks for your comment :)
I enjoyed that! I found it very interesting and would definitely have stayed to the end. I love your videos!
So glad you did this experiment! I have been researching how to preserve fresh tomatoes 'til the cows came home and honestly...my decision is that I need to get a heated greenhouse for the winter. I live in Quebec right now but we're moving to the Maritimes next spring and I would just LOVE to have a fresh tomato and basil SALAD (with lettuce!!!) in February. I think a heated greenhouse is in my future! Until then, it's the water bath canner!
Well, I've been to a local outlet that sell products close to the best before dates. There was a 1.6kg jar of Marinated yellow tomatoes and gherkins produced in Bulgaria. The ingredients list is yellow tomatoes, gherkins, water, salt, sugar, acidity regulator: citric acid, parsley and spices.
The toms are small plum tomatoes 25-40mm in length.
Looks like, tastes like a brine.
Yet don't taste vinegar pickled, but brine yet the tomato texture is lightly cooked. Not the usual canned texture.
5% salt in the nutritional info....
Might be trying to replicate this
Clifford Cain - that sounds like a food product I need to try (and then try to replicate) - thanks for sharing your discovery & idea :)
Your guys make some very high quality videos. Keep up the good work
Fun video. Glad it is getting close to planting time. Looking forward to your summer videos. I am in South Dakota and have strawberry plants greening up and asparagus peeking out. Rhubarb is up. Started seeds indoors last weekend. It will still freeze at night for another month.
Thanks Debbie! We can't wait until planting time either! It sounds like you're a little further along than us.
Strawberries, asparagus, and rhubarb... Sounds amazing!
The best way I know (that works, I've done it myself) is canning tomatoes whole, just peeled and canned in salt water.
You boil some water and keep a bowl full of water and ice closeby and you make a shallow cross on the tomatoe's skins.
Dip them in boiling water for 30 sec to 1min (more or less depends on your variety but it shouldn't take long for a good result)
then dump them straight in the ice cold water. (they should then peel right off but still conserve their texture thanks to cooling them that fast)
Put the tomatoes in jars (do not pack them in if you want to keep them intact) and top the jars up to 3/4 of an inch to the top with boiling water at 20gr of salt per litre
(that is 3.2ounces per gallon) and seal the jars right away with the sealing caps.
You should have tomatoes with a texture and taste as close to fresh as possible to use all winter long.
(minus the skin of course which I always though was a plus anyways)
My thoughts are are you using the same kind of wood as in the mentioned article. Each trees ashes have unique compounds and structures. Maybe you didn’t use the right tree.
I was wondering about that as well. It didn't say what kind of wood he used, but you might be right. It may just be that simple. I'll have to do some more research about that. Thanks!
I would start by figuring out where he lived to see what trees are in his area, if you want to keep going with it.
👍🏻 love your videos! You have some of the best explanations on things that are easy to understand! Thank you!
The banana tree chemical composition may be an important factor. Trunks and leaves of banana are cut into 1 foot pieces and used to treat (cure/purify) newly constructed ponds using cement and meant for Koi. www.koianswers.com/discussion/29/new-pond-syndrome/p1 - could be the banana tree excretes a chemical, or chemicals, that impacted the site where the tomatoes were. Or, perhaps the type of wood used to create the ash is important. And, after reading the article - taking ash from a 'chimney' may result in a composition of more than just wood ash.
Bananas themselves off gas and ripen other fruit when stored together in produce departments. So, produce guys will typically store them in a different location in the backroom. I don't have any experience with actual banana trees. Might be an interesting to strike up conversation with more tropical homesteaders.
Also, temp of your basement vs temp of African soil. And moisture level. Were original tomatoes found after rainy or season at base of banana tree. Roots would have stored moisture vs your completely dry Ash.
@@BackToReality it looked like you had newspaper in the stove as a fire starter. I wonder if the chemicals from that and the ink might have changed the chemical reaction.
Three thoughts from reading the comments:
Try using green tomatoes, so they ripen slowly over time. But check them regularly, and don’t expect any more than 3-5 months of storage. Use them as they ripen.
Dry ash is pretty alkaline, but it would be more of a dessicant until the moisture level rose enough to dissolve the lye. The top and sides of the cardboard are dry, so all the moisture is in the ash. At that point, you’re creating “century eggs” with tomatoes.
Maybe try mixing Ash with sawdust. The sawdust can absorb some of the moisture and also react with some of the lye, keeping it off the tomatoes.
Perhaps, it's time for a poly tunnel and grow lights. Maybe try all year growing?
I think you're right! :)
When you have time try Kratky hydroponic veggies?
yup. Probably a lot easier to just keep growing them than any other method of preservation
The new grow lights are extremely efficient. I’m sure you can grow tomatoes indoors now for cheaper than they cost in the store.
A few thoughts here; I have pulled up tomato plants by the root, shaken the dirt off, and hung the plant with all of its fruit upside down in a cool dark corner of garage or basement and harvested the tomatoes as they ripened over the next two months. I have also wrapped green tomatoes in newspaper, checked them often, and used them continuously for about three months. I would try again with the wood ashes but 1) make sure they are in a slightly more humid environment, 2) try placing some of the tomatoes stem side down, 3) try starting with varying degrees of ripeness, and 4) try ashes from a few different kinds of wood. Best of luck!
Yup. Upside down vines with root ball intact works. Lots of dirt falls off, messy
Hi, you may have heard of Paul Gautschi from Back to Eden Garden, in one of his videos, he explains that tomato has beneficial substance that helps humans resist the sun's uv damaging effect on the skin, however it is not healthful to consume out of season, in colder climates as it has a negative effect at that time, often people say to stay away from tomato and sauces when there are arthritic conditions, which are normally more apparent in colder seasons. i think the logic is to eat food in its season would be the healthiest way to go.
Paul Gautschi is a wonderful man and a wealth of information. I'm very fortunate to live near him and have visited his beautiful farm a number of times. I tend to agree that eating seasonally is the best way to go however I love the flavor of tomato in soups and stews in the winter so if I want to preserve them for use in sauces or soups, or stews, I buy them in the summer and toss them whole and into a bag and just put them in the freezer. They're not good for slicing but very good for cooking.
That is so awesome that you were willing to be our ginnipig thanks.
I noticed in the article that Mr. Nduwimana's photo showed him placing his tomatoes in a "stem-down" (upsidedown) fashion in the ashes and covering them. I have also read that certain varieties of tomatoes might perform better than others but this inverted placement might have something to do with it. One certainly can't freeze them as their cellular structure breaks down leaving a bunch of mush! Canning as stewed or as a sauce is our method but I've yet to perfect a tomato "Sauce sandwich"!! ;)
Freezing them is ok if you are going to throw them into chili or tomato sauce. They fall apart and if you want to you can pull the skins out later.
I'm not a tomato grower, just an ordinary consumer. I bought a lot of tomatoes very cheap when they were in season. I put them in a plastic box (while the fruit was hard to touch) and kept them closed in the bottom of the refrigerator where it was less cold; till I needed them. I used 1 box and opened another only after I had finished 1 box. This made sure the tomatoes remained air tight in the refrigerator. The last box lasted a little over 2 months max. Perhaps growing them in green houses on a staggered basis would be the ideal solution.
Tomate de ramallet =(Lycopersicon Eculentum)
Muy perspicaz ! Se agradece el nombre científico ! Many thanks for the Insight on The scientific name. Greetings from Chile ! I am interested in all natural foods , preserves , and conserves.
While we are nearing the end of the summer here in Ontario I have so many unripe tomatoes in my garden. I’ve thrown some in the freezer to use for cooking purposes already but I also want to able to use some as fresh. So I’m gonna hang all the unripe ones from the ceiling in the basement for the experiment.
Different varieties of tomatoes store longer than others too
Well, considering that I made lye-water for soap making from scratch using wood ash, I am not sure I would eat ANYTHING that came in contact with wood ash. I was interested in what you were doing because I heat with wood and always have a surplus of wood ash that I am looking for uses for. You always have interesting, fascinating, and really fun experiments! Learning a lot! Thank you!
Maybe the peppers were a factor? I wouldn't think so, but as soon as you added them you changed the parameters.
Jenerous Soul I was thinking that too. Some veggies and fruits off gas which can spoil other veggies and fruit. Maybe the peppers off gassed and ruined everything.
I also wonder if the sifting of the ash made a difference too. Did the other guy sift the wood ash?
Bell peppers are nonclimacteric in behavior and produce very low levels of ethylene. Ethylene is the gas that some fruits produce and they will cause these fruits to ripen. This is a climacteric fruit. However Tomatoes are climacteric and they actually produce a burst of ethylene on the breaker day. So, maybe using ripe tomatoes vs green ones? Either way, I don't think the peppers were actually the cause. Though I could be wrong...
www.mpg.de/5934313/peppers_ethylene_maturity
www.thekitchn.com/food-science-ethylene-gas-130275
same thought. just read that storing onions and potatoes together are problematic (for the onions).
@@op3129, learning that exact fact is what set me down the path of learning about ethylene production in plants. I always kept them together and had a lot of spoilage. I now have a little chart that I keep on my fridge so that I can easily separate climacteric fruits and veggies from non. Its helped me quite a bit, my produce lasts a lot longer and I very rarely waste anything now that I have a dehydrator.
Your best bet would be to find that sweet temperature zone that large grocery supply centers use to protect produce before shipping to each retail store! They can keep fruits and veggies including tomatoes fresh for up to 4 months at least, but they use a specific temperature in a massive cold storage unit and it is monitored continuously and different fruits and veggies require different temps to protect them the longest!
Also store bought tomatoes are often hybrids which are genetically modified to help promote longer storage, which comes at a price "flavor"! Another option would be to build a small interior grow area and just farm a few plants using a combination of sun light and led grow bulbs, yes they may be a little slower to produce, you can also use blossom set to ensure you actually get more fruit and just start them at least a month before outdoor harvest time!
I'm thinking the potassium from the bottom of banana trees might be the missing ingredient. Just a thought...always thinking when I watch your videos!
Interesting idea! I'll have to look into that! Thanks!
That would be a lot of potassium because doesn’t ash also create a lot of potassium as well?
Any way if you don’t have a banana tree and want to try adding more potassium my gf (she’s pretty smart about this stuff) says coffee grounds have a lot of potassium in them so we spread them as well as ash and eggshells on our little garden
@@johnpjones1775 nah pot ass (wood ash) is potassium.
That came to my mind. What else was near that banana tree?!
@@terrim.602 or how dry was the soil? He said heavily amended soil, so there was still some soil with the woodash too
I've seen them cold smoked on the vine before and just hung up on the wall in Italy. Lasts through the winter just fine. Sauce tomatoes preserve more easily than slicers though, since they are lower moisture to begin with.
What would you recommend as good sauce tomatoes? I grew Amish paste tomatoes and another heirloom variety to compare. We were so busy, I forget to compare, lol!!!
Maybe you are not aware that lye was made from wood ash and water in the days when women regularly made their own lye soaps? As a child I watched my grandmother make her own lye. The liquid of the tomatoes and peppers could have made a mild form of lye which dried them out.
I seriously appreciate the disclaimer, but i watched the entire video just because of that. and subbed.
Excellent - very entertaining and scientific - something too often missing. Every hypothesis has a variety of possible outcomes, so this experiment is valid. It means that the rest of us don't have to find a cardboard box, buy a wood burner, cut down some trees, light them, burn ourselves lighting them or get lung diseases from the dust as we collect our wood ash. Oh! And we get to eat our tomatoes. Best wishes.
LOL, well I'm glad we could save you all that trouble :)
Thanks for watching AJWGBFX!
AJWGBFX LOL
My favourite RUclips channel.
Nice experiment, the outcome not as much. But you at least tried👍👍👍
It's the thought that counts, eh? :)
Thanks for watching Ren!
I might as well share this personal experience - it was, I think, 2002, a very warm (mild) winter. There was snowfall, yes. But lots of sunny days, too. At the time, my backyard was facing south and linked to the house we had a flower bed. One cherry tomato plant found its way there, probably late in the season. So, on December 20th-ish I get in my backyard and notice these bright red cherry tomatoes on the (mostly dead) plant. Some green ones, too. I pick them all up. Eat the red ones (YUM). By the time I assemble my pickling supplies ( a few days), the green ones turned red. This was in Whitby, Ontario. So here's an idea to use the proximity of your house to provide heat, on the south side (most light in winter months). The secret ingredient may be to completely ignore what's going on with those plants :)
Late December tomatoes, here in Ontario!? Amazing!
I do like your suggestion to completely ignore the plants, lol. That seems to (unintentionally) work well for us a lot of the time too! ;)
Great video. Good experiment. Wish it would have worked out for you. Nothing wrong with trying. Looking forward to your next adventures. 😊👍👍
Wow, An honest youtube video guy video for once. Im liking simply for that sheer fact alone
Hi I just read the article and I wonder if maybe the climate also has something to do with the results
While in storage what temperatures were the norm? What type of ashes were used ? Could these factors possibly influence the outcome ?
I don't know if this is relevant to this experiment, but I have seen some articles that claim that picked tomatoes stored upside down or with the cut stems covered in plastic wrap, will last longer than tomatoes stored upright and/or with uncovered stems. The explanation was that the cut stems were a "weak point" in the natural barrier of the tomato's skin and storing them upright also allowed the spoilage bacteria to land and settle upon these "wounds" causing them to rot and spoil faster. I noticed in the article a picture seemed to show the farmer's tomatoes were all stored stem down, while your experiment had them stem up. Not sure if this would make much difference, but this video reminded me that old article.
I have read not to buy avacados with stem end missing. So I make sure I don't.
Temperature, humidity and environment would most likely need to be perfect to get ripe tomatoes to last. So around 40F(or whatever temp they don't lose flavor) for the temp. Oil or wax the skins to prevent moisture loss and have them in high humidity. Finally keep them in a 100% CO2 or nitrogen atmosphere. Packed with stem part down, all greens removed. The ashes are pointless. I imagine it's pretty expensive to try to make ripe tomatoes last longer. It's simpler to turn a room in a house into a grow room or have a heated greenhouse, and do the work of bees yourself.
I'll be having the first cherry tomatoes extremely soon(turning red now). The early girl plants are absolutely loaded with green tomatoes. Main problem here is it gets too hot and plants stop setting fruit. If you allow them to live some continue in the fall with more tomatoes providing green tomatoes that make it past January.
some oldtimers would leave the green tomatoes on the vine and store the vines under the house
near the fireplace so they would not freeze. the green tomatoes would ripen slowly for a while.
Great video. Where's Paula? More videos please.
You could dehydrate or even better sun dry some of your tomatoes and keep them in air tight jars air vacum pack them. When needed add a little warm water and soak for a bit. Depending on the variety some will taste almost like a fresh tomato, and to cook with will be just like fresh. Anyway they will taste much better than anything you are going to get at the big supermarket.
I really enjoy your experiments and love your narrating voice on the videos. Keep up the good work! 💕
thumbs up for honesty
you should try adding some moisture to your wood ask, probably combine it with a little sand. as you mentioned in the video this method worked for the farmer initially under a banana tree which means outside with some measure of moisture. I also agree with the assessment from many other posts that variety will have a huge effect.
I don't think it will ever work. Root vegetables can be stored, because the plant's reproductive strategy is to survive the winter underground to support shoots in the spring. The reproductive strategy of grains like wheat, which evolved in Mediterranean climates, is to contain little moisture so that it can survive the dry winter and then sprout during the spring rains. Soft fruits like tomatoes, grapes, mangoes, etc. evolved to be attract the attention of an animal who would eat the fruit (hence the bright red color) and then distribute the seeds by shitting them out elsewhere. So, the fruit which is normally going to be inedible after a short time is not going to offer any innate advantages for preservation. If you think of it none of the soft fruits can be kept in their ripened condition for very long. Maybe apples for the winter in a barrel.
So, I'd bet against it. Dried tomatoes have more flavor than fresh ones anyway.
I just found this channel and I am excited to see if you have found something that worked. I think some of the science behind what happened might be that the white part of wood ash is what is used to make lye. The black part is the charcoal and thry should always be seperated as much as possible for either purpose. I know that the lye is also used to make soap, but had never heard of dry ash being used as a preservative. It is often used to dry and dehydrate though, so I am not surprised by that part. I wonder if part of what worked was GROWING the tomatoes in ash instead of storing them in ash after picking.
gave a"like" for at least warning me to quit this video early for a FAILED exsperiment
One factor to consider is that his wood ash was sprinkled around a tree, out in the elements, so it would have had a decent amount of moisture in it. Your wood ash was bone dry, acting like a desiccant, and more than likely pulling moisture from the tomatoes. I would try packing the tomatoes in wood ash that had a fair amount of moisture content. Thus keeping them hydrated and still preventing mold/fungus/bacteria growth.
Use clay based containers like pottery
One year I had an incredible amount of cherry toms, Sweetie 100's. I cut a piece of plant in the early fall, rooted it, planted it in the five gallon pail in the house in north and west windows (corner of room). I ran twine up to a plant hanger and the plant crawled up the twine and down again, I shook it when I went past to pollinate and we had fresh cherry toms all winter and spring. :)
Maybe someone already said but try bees wax?? Smother the whole red jewel in a good layer of wax and see how long it lasts?
Rachel Tomlinson I’d suggest doing a rinse in iodophor to sanitize them first. Otherwise you’d be giving any microorganisms sole inheritance of a high-sugar, low-oxygen environment. Makes a nasty tomato wine or a bomb.
Sanitize yer shytte.
At the first sign of a freeze, my grandfather would pull up the tomato plants roots and all with the green tomatoes on them and hang them upside down in the cellar at our house in Virginia.... We had fresh tomatoes at Christmas! 😊
You are a great human being,very honest and pure hearted person. All your videos are made very professionally and they are very informative videos.
That African farmer must be a LIAR. YOU can't preserve tomatoes. Tomatoes can be Sun dried OR you make tomatoe PUREE.
dude you introduced a LOT of variables to the experiment. The guy in Africa, from what i can tell from your description of him, had the tomatoes in the frozen winter ground... you used the word "basement" which means it's connected to the rest of the house which means it's quite a bit warmer than the outside ground in wintertime, also he had them in ash-containing soil not pure ash. Anyway appreciate the video, love the editing & the fact that you gave the result and showed the whole process; subscribed, can't wait to try this out myself :)
Should of done them green
Take a picture. Then it's preserved, sort of. haha....Loved your video. Very creatively made.
Part you came for 5:40
Thank you
"Plus it occured to us, that if this method works for tomatoes, it may also work for peppers. So what the heck, we threw some of thos in as well. "
hahaha
Great video! Thank you a lot for sharing your knowledge and good vibes.
Maybe would have worked if the ash was wet?
Interesting... Mixing ash with water produces small amounts of lye, I believe. Perhaps that might help with the antibacterial properties? Good suggestion! Thanks!
While I've never tried to preserve tomatoes for several months, I have found that washing them with iodized salt and keeping them in a dry area will keep 90% of them good for about a month. The skin dries out somewhat but this is the only method I've found that lets me keep tomatoes I get from the farmers market for more than a week.
Love the idea for potatoes. From Ontario Canada too. As I have many sunny windows, harvested last crop of green tomatoes and placed in windows. Ate them as they ripened. Ate the last ripened red tomato, about a week ago...3rd week November.
In summer I would generally grow about 20 tomato plants and I would pick all my green tomatoes just prior to the frost. I'd make the large ones into fried green tomatoes for as long as they would laat. Whatever was left over I would wrap in newspaper and store them in a large box in a cold room (about 50 degrees) in the basement. They would ripen a few at a time and I would wait until they were starting to turn before bringing them upstairs. The rest of the tomatoes would last until mid-November or so.
I will try the wood ash method with some tomatoes I am harvesting this week, and I will try both green and ripe tomatoes. Important variables include type of wood used to make the ash, variety of tomato, temperature, humidity, et cetera. Shelf life can vary quite dramatically between different varieties of tomato. I have heard of this method, but I have not heard it claimed that it keeps them fresh for 6 months. Given that in my hot humid swamp, homegrown organic tomatoes melt/rot within 3-4 days of picking them unless refrigerated, I would be happy if this method preserved them even for just a few weeks. If keeping them in wood ash keeps them fresh for a month, that would be awesome. Most years I harvest tomatoes into November and start harvesting again in April. If I were desperate, I could do some indoors under lights from Dec-Mar. Cheers
Wrap your green tomatoes in newspaper and store in a cardboard box with straw, but don't let tomatoes touch.
Put box under your bed or in a dark place. A few months later and you have perfect red ripe tomatoes. We did this my entire childhood. IT DOES WORK
Great to see you guys back. Wondering where you got too. Not far from Saskatoon and we just got rid of our snow. So excited to get back into the garden.
Hey Paul! We still had snow as of filming, but it melted during the time it took to edit. So it sounds like we're in a similar boat.
We can't wait to get back into the garden either!
Thank you for being upfront with the results!
A tomato grower- says a lot for this method. I picked for a tomato grower as a kid, and there are a couple of things to consider: 1) tomato variety for long shelf life. 2) tomatoes are picked when they are just turning white- ish green then ripen on the way to the store 3) all others were either turned to sauce, taken to farmers market for quick sale, or wasted in the field except for heirloom varieties. The method sounds like something to do at the gleaning ( the oh sh-- killing frost tonight cut everything that can be used moment). Anyway the ripening of tomatoes sets them all to ripen at once anything to isolate the gas the tomatoes put out from the others should work newspaper , wood ash, cool areas to slow the process.
This autumn I cut a lot of tomatoes while they were still green, and just hung them in the basement , they were Indigo Rose, Black Russian , Tumbling Tom Red and yellow. They all matured in the dark and I had fresh tomatoes from october until late december . Just cut them and hang them upside-down from a beam or similar. There are also italian varieties called "Pienello" which are truly long lasting, I have not tried this but with this technique they should last 5-6 months, but they will not be as sweet as other tomatoes.