Hello, tomatoes!

Closeup shots in a story about the tomato fruits coming out in my balcony garden + Science facts about how tomatoes ripen.

Flowers have been around for a couple of weeks, and they are now starting to convert into fruits:

Some plants are more advanced, and already lost their flowers starting to prepare whole clusters of fruit:

Let’s zoom into this last one:

And now into these flowers:

The surface of the growing fruit is so nitid. And so those stingy hairs!

Did you know that all green parts of tomato plants are quite toxic? You better not try them!

And did you know I’ve studied the chemistry of tomato fruit ripening? If you are into this, here’s a peer-reviewed article you may want look at:

In this work we compared the metabolites of tomato fruits ripened in vs. off plant. As the title summarizes, we found that off-plant ripening alters the primary metabolites, among them glutamate which is a taste enhancer.

That’s why tomatoes cut green and ripened in chambers often don’t taste too good!

The accompanying salad is growing too

The lettuce I re-grew from a grocery plant after eating it all:

And my corn salad and red lettuce:

You can check how much they grew by comparing to this story from 1 week ago:

And for dessert, still strawberries…

www.lucianoabriata.com I write and photoshoot about everything that lies in my broad sphere of interests: nature, science, technology, programming, etc. Become a Medium member to access all its stories (affiliate links of the platform for which I get small revenues without cost to you) and subscribe to get my new stories by email. To consult about small jobs check my services page here. You can contact me here.