Many of us who have fruit trees often times find ourselves having problems determining when the fruit is ready or not. Picking your fruits too ripe can cause lots of problems. The best way to purchase fruit trees and fruit bushes such as blueberries, strawberries and plums is through online garden centers or nurseries where we can get wholesale plants at wholesale prices.

Did you know fruit ripening is largely caused by a plant hormone called ethylene, which is a gas? Most fruits give off ethylene in ever increasing quantities as they ripen, and we can use this to our advantage when ripening fruit. Ethylene production increases as temperature rises, which is why you may have noticed that your fruit ripens quicker in the summer than in the winter. The fridge can be used to slow down ripening considerably. Conversely, heat speeds things up.

Have you ever wondered whether a fruit is ripe? Sometimes it can be tricky and can leave those of us at the grocery store stumped and there is nothing worse than biting into an un ripened fruit. The best way to get fresh fruit is straight from the tree, but unfortunately, most people don't have orchards and gardens full of fruit ripe for the picking. Most of the fruit we buy at the grocery store was picked before its prime in order to avoid shipping damage and storage loss.

The key to picking ripe fruit is look, smell, touch and hear. For every fruit, it is different. If you have a tree or orchard, of course fruit that falls from the vine or limb, or is easily “picked” is usually ripened. Apples for instance, the shinier the skin the crisper the apple. Bananas are not ripe if there is any green on the skin. Melons can be smelled and “thumped”. They should smell really sweet and have a hollow sound when thumped. Some fruits, like mangos, can be squeezed or poked and if the flesh “gives” then it is ripe. As so with kiwi, peaches, apricots and papayas. A pineapple is ripe when it is bright in yellow color and smells sweet. Pomegranates are probably the most difficult. Their skin is bright crimson red even when not ripe. But you can tell when the pomegranate is ripe when the shape is no longer round but the sides have become square. A ripe pomegranate is heavier and when tapped will make a metallic sound

So how to find ripe fruit? There are a couple of rules to follow.

-Green is unripe, yellow is ripe, with the exception of apples

-Shiny is ripe

-Fruit often takes on a waxy shine when it is ripe - this goes for cherries, to some extent apples, and citrus fruits especially; but take note that many producers actually wax their fruit to make it look better and for protection

-Soft is ripe

-Ripening mellows fruits, so don't buy anything that resists squeezing. You can't leave a dent and then not buy it, of course, so this really is not a very practical criterion. However, the motto i see so frequently in groceries: "Don't squeeze us - we don't squeeze you!" is stupid: you would squeeze me if you had to eat me!

-Buy on the market out on the market there is more choice, and more importantly, much less effort and money is spent on presentation and on keeping a sterile environment - as a consequence, you get a better idea of what the fruit is really like buy during the season fruits should really be picked ripe, or as close to ripe as possible - the sooner they are picked, the harder it becomes for them to ripen. Local cherries are only offered during three weeks of July/August, so those are the weeks to eat cherries - at any other time, you'll be buying cherries flown in by airplane from God knows where and more tampering will need to be done to make them look fresh by the time you see them - at the expense of their taste buy on warm days the ripening process is greatly influenced by temperature; in the Netherlands, the average temperature is too low for most fruits to grow or ripen properly. So when you buy imported fruits in search for something ripe and tasty, it greatly helps to do it during a heat wave, when the fruit will ripen after you buy it. (As explained above, most of the fruits grown locally will never properly ripen no matter what you do.) Buy when (almost) ripe.

The story goes that unripe fruit will ripen when you leave it long enough. In my experience, this is a myth. Too often I have bought a net of oranges that were only suitable as tennis balls, even after 3 months of storage at room temperature. Another story is that Ethane, which is released during the ripening process, especially by bananas, will greatly accelerate it, so you are advised to keep unripe avocados with bananas in a plastic bag. Ripe fruit will usually spread a delicious scent that it can be recognized by - but only at room temperature, and at least in the Netherlands, most fruit is considerably colder at the time you buy it, even when it is at arm's reach, so scent really is not a very useful indicator in practice.

If you plan on purchasing your fruit trees from online garden centers and nurseries make sure you follow the rule of thumb when it comes to making sure your fruit is ripe before you pick it.