What fruits WON'T ripen after picking??

[Pete E. Kruzer]

I know there are some fruits that won't ripen after being picked. I believe the cantalope and the watermelon are two of them. Can anyone tell me fruits won't ripen after being picked?

[simy1]

no berry, including grapes, will ripen after being picked.

[told2b]

Never ripen after picking: Soft berries, cherries, citrus, grapes, litchis, olives, pineapple, watermelon.

Ripen only after picking: Avocados.

Ripen in color, texture, and juiciness but not in sweetness after picking: Apricots, blueberries, figs, melons (besides watermelon), nectarines, passionfruit, peaches, persimmons.

Get sweeter after picking: Apples, cherimoyas, kiwi, mangos, papayas, pears, sapotes, soursops.

Ripen in every way after harvest: Bananas.

[Pete E. Kruzer]

Snipped for brevity

Thanks for the info.

Would you happen to know what fruits/vegetables that don't need to be stored under refrigeration? Beside the ususal potatoes, onions..

[told2b]

?? Don't know exactly what you mean? If you go into the local fruit/ vegetable store there is no refrigeration for any of the stock.

[hob]

Myth - Both cantalope and watermelon ripen after picking. I ripen them all the time - as long as you define "ripen" as becoming sweeter and having more fragrance. I ripened two cantalope last week. Basically, all fruits ripen after picking if they have reached a certain level of maturity but are yet "green" (past hard bitter but still fairly acidic).

Basically, the plant stores food in the seed case as starch, starting the case out as a small bitter case and gradually becoming less and less bitter.

Starch is not an attractant for most seed distribution vectors, but sugar is.

The starch starts converting to sugar and esters once the seed case has been separated from the plant's food supply, either by loss of the stem vitality or by separation, then attracting animals as vectors for seed distribution.

All fruits do this.

I ripen grapes, pineapple, cantalope, bananas, tomatoes, etc. all the time.

I am hard pressed to think of a fruit that does not ripen after separation from the food supply.

(Watermelon's "slow ripening" when quite immature is confused with "not ripening", I think because it being a large fruit, it is easy to remove a

50-pounder-at-maturity at only 20 pounds and mistakenly think it had developed enough to convert inb a reasonable time. There is a point at which you pick a green fruit so far before natural ripening that it will take forever to ripen. That said, it has been a common practice in Minnesota gardens to pick really immature watermelon just before the first frost and leave them on the counter, and have the flesh turn pink several weeks after picking. )